Log off the web: save the planet

A new fun project is live. Check how you destroy the Earth by browsing the internet:

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Custom GoogleMaps integration

By PHP Developer Alexey Zabaykin

How to list clients’ feedback in a way that shows that you have many clients and they are spread globally?

Thanks to the huge amount of feedbacks, our previous edition of References page turned to look like the Star Wars story-telling.

We decided that Google Maps will do the job. I should note that the site engine, developed by Sibers, was created using Sophit framework. This engine is very flexible and pretty simple for creating administrative solutions and fully separates HTML templates from PHP code. That’s why creation of PHP administrative part doesn’t cause any problems and webmasters enjoy a huge area for professional activities.

The next point was to research the necessary interactions with Google Maps. There is a lot of abilities provided by Google to change types of appearance and various features. So, to escape the mess, I investigated a bit in order to create the optimal solution. Thus, here is a list of crucial moments of creating our References page.

Backend

Simply put, we have to insert locations and link them with needed information. Administrator has two possibilities to manage the locations: automatically, through the function

geocoder.getLatLng()

- looks for the place by name only – and manually with function

GEvent.addListener(map, ‘click’, mapClick)

- sets latitude/longitude by a click on map; coordinates then are transferred into the form by

mapClick function.

Displaying

Ok, the administration form is done. Now, in order to display feedbacks on the map, we pass them to javascript in the cities array and Google Maps start to populate with our thankful customers. For further interactivity, let’s make the bubble images change when mouse hovers it.

GEvent.addListener(marker, “mouseover”, function() {
marker.setImage(pic_hand_up.src);
});
GEvent.addListener(marker, “mouseout”, function() {
marker.setImage(marker.getIcon().image);
});

And one more tweak, image preloading:

var pic_hand_up = new Image()

Now the little green person gladly greets us and does not disappear during first loading. The customer reference can be quite large, therefore its content dynamically loads by clicking on the icon:

_getFullReferences(city_id)

Also, references with phone numbers are displayed immediately below the map. When clicking on the address line, the map centers on this location via method map.setCenter()

Time to check it by yourself: http://www.sibers.com/portfolio/references/

Our input for the global start-up conference

A startup company ExchangeP led by our friend and client Charles has been selected for TechCrunch50 from over a thousand of other applicants. Charles and his partner Saul presented their company and business plans to such fantastic people as Kevin Rose (Founder, Digg), Roelof Botha (Partner, Sequoia Capital), Don Dodge (Director of Business Development, Microsoft), and Mark Cuban (Founder, Broadcast.com, Owner of Dallas Mavericks), as well as to 1,700 of the Conference attendees, and millions of on-line watchers all around the world.

ExchangeP helps you think big and imagine a future of internet and global markets. You can tell a new story of Web3.0 with ExchangeP. Learn more about it at its TechCrunch50 profile page.

We have spent all night watching Charles’ presentation in San Francisco and congratulate him on this true success!

Download here official Press Release about ExchangeP.

Four Google Adwords Trends

We have been using Google Adwords for site HireRussians.com for more than 2 years. Now it is when ads are optimized and run with only some small everyday tweaking.

Each month, we spend no more than $400. We decided that $400 is the absolute maximum we can pay Google and in fact we haven’t yet had a chance to pay Google in full. The graph below shows our spendings since April 2007 (blue line) and exponential trendline (black).

As you can see, usually we spend about half of the amount we allow ourselves. The next graph shows Adwords conversion over the time.

First of all, check that the blue line almost exactly follows the spendings line of the first graph. If we spend too little in August, there will be not many conversions in September. And check spendings in October and then the results in December. The cycle is usually 1-2 months.

And now look at the black trendline: even though that monthly conversion varies from 5 to 10% (twice!), the trend is very stable at about 7.5%. It means that the site works stably regardless of clicks and costs.

With conversions being stable, the number of clicks on our Adwords ads becomes fewer and fewer:

This chart exactly follows the first one, demonstrating direct relation of Adwords click depending on how much money you spend on them.

However, regardless of that, number of visitors to HireRussians.com is growing:

Having done a lot of work optimizing the site for Google Adwords, we found that we optimized it for Google generic search also. The hardest thing in SEO is optimizing the site for three things: ads, search engine, and… human. Finding a balance between them is our next priority for HireRussians.com.

5 Eras of Applications

By Sibers Flash Team Leader Alexander Nemtsov

Mainframes. Remember the times.

Oldbies remember the times when terminals used to connect to powerful servers and the information was processed by mainframes, a thin client being essentially an input device to display data.

Gradually PCs were becoming smaller and more powerful, and it became possible to process information at work places. Thanks to traditional modern applications.

A huge Soviet supercomputer working at clock rate of 10 MHz – fastest in the 60’s. Now one of our offices is located in a room where such machine used to stay. Image courtesy of Novosibirsk Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics.

Traditional Applications

It is traditional application that we access information through, are entertained by and get new potential for our work. Basically, they are the frameworks of our interaction with the PC. Any problems we might face while working with the computer arise from the way the applications were developed long time ago.

Traditional applications have been serving us faithfully for ages, but they are not absolutely devoid of drawbacks. They are tied to a certain machine and your operating and file system. They need installation, which requires special skills and takes time. Moreover, almost all the results of your work with applications are stored locally on the PC, and collective work with them runs into certain difficulties.

Thus, we have to think over main processes inside the applications. Except doing your work, you have to know something about file types, codecs, drivers and many more things having nothing to do with the task you are solving. Being an expert in your field is not enough any longer, you have to be an expert in computers as well.

Microsoft and Indian software companies are famous for developing software. This picture shows Indian developers at Microsoft. Courtesy of blogs.msdn.com/ie

Web Applications

The Internet changed an average person’s capabilities dramatically. Now we can easily find and use vast digital experience stored in the net. With standards for browsers developing, users can expect any content to be available for use any time and any place.

I realized the possibility of replacing traditional applications by web ones when I saw my friend using Gmail web interface instead of his mail client. He was not an expert in computers and I offered him my help in installing and tuning Thunderbird. My friend thanked me but politely declined the offer as the interface perfectly satisfied all his needs.

Web applications are a nice discovery, but they do not lack some problems, either.

Quite often we use the Internet as a source of information. It can as well be used as an effective tool for entertainment and improvement of our work facilities.

Just like this person in a Soviet poster says “Net” to alcohol, certain Internet users say “no” to desktop software and choose web-based applications.

RIA

Traditional web applications are built up on some well-known standard elements of interface. Hyperlinks, combo-boxes and forms are excellent for creating interactive pages, but unfortunately are not enough for editing images, showing video flow, displaying GPS data or making a phone call. Users are requiring more and more of the interface and make designers and developers provide new ways of interaction with different data and processes.

Rich Internet Applications are notable for providing you with a possibility to do your work in the Internet. The set of tools I need for my work is to be available for me everywhere regardless of the PC type or the OS version. The same refers to my data. All of my working environment is supposed to follow me like a cloud, RIA inherited this idea from traditional web applications and went further.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any image of a cloud of rich internet applications following their users wherever they go.

Symbiosis

Multipurpose RIAs are a new generation of applications evolving as a result of web application and traditional desktop application symbiosis.

When the applications and the data related to them are really “on a cloud”, we get radically new capabilities. It becomes much easier to share data or work in collaboration. Such collaboration can proceed either on- or off-line, with the use of audio or video flow and text to supplement the communication.

True RIAs make absolutely unnecessary an abstract concept of a file. Your data is saved and you can search it through. However, you never deal with “raw” files, you work with your “ideas” instead. Such work is much more effective as it focuses on the result and does not require a user to know something about computer processes.

The coral animal lives in symbiosis with small algae and other organisms – just like RIA with desktop applications! Courtesy of coral-reefs.org.

Star Startup

Bringing even the most bold ideas of our clients to life, we are happy to show you a new daring project – StarMashers!

With StarMashers, you can make your favorite stars say whatever you want: from unexpected political statements to shocking confessions of stars’ private life. Whether paparazzi lose their jobs, now totally depends on you – if you don’t see your celebrity listed, just upload their video and words they say, mix it up, add some spice and voila – a new sensation is ready!

Trend Or Treat?

By Alex Polezhaev

Look at this Google Trends screenshot I just captured this snowy Siberian night:

Do you see how accurately the outsourcing trend (red) follows the web 2.0 trend (blue)? Same ups and downs, same general trends: the red line looks just like the blue one was aligned, straightened and leveled.

And I am sure, that’s not a coincidence. New ways for people to collaborate (Web 2.0) demand new ways to develop them (outsource). Ease to launch a startup comes together with ease to find skilled developers. And I have come up with even more spiritual slogan: Web 2.0 is discovering new people out there, and outsourcing is discovering new talents.

New Way To Find Services You Need

By Alex Polezhaev

With this new 3.5 version of Skype it became possible to browse through a range of services to find exactly what you need. The SkypeFind tab opens up a list of your friends’ recommendations and search fields allowing you to look through services all around the world.

In SkypeFind window, you can see that most popular service out there is restaurants. Computers and web go just behind. Interesting that now Skype allows you to earn money by delivering your services on Skype. I already added mine – did you?

4 AJAX RIA Frameworks

By Sibers CTO Andrey Gavrilov

Last week, Google Web Toolkit got into my hands so I’ve played around with it, read some info about it, checked out the other web frameworks and eventually decided to write a review on them all. Here it goes.

Google Web Toolkit
URL

The Google’s name in the title already guarantees some quality for the product. So I put it first in my review list. But truthfully, GWT functions in a horrible, horrible way: developer writes code in Java, which is then converted into JavaScript by a special compiler application, using a set of widgets. The compiler is closed code, and only its additional components are created in Open Source.

Advantages:

- Made by Google.
- A lot of PR around it.
- The result is executed completely on client and can function with different servers.

Disadvantages:

- Language conversion always means problems with the resulting code.
- Result is always executed on client and all RPC should be realized manually.

Echo2
URL

Echo2 is often compared to GWT. I bet that Google guys are simply paying other analysts to compare GWT with its weakest opponent. It works like this: developer writes Java code executed on server and creates RIA interface in Swing style. Open Source. Chargeable IDE.

Advantages:

- No language conversion.

Disadvantages:

- Large size of resulting files.
- Low quality of control over results.
- Functionality poor tools for client-server communication.

OpenLaszlo
URL

Initially it was used for creating Flash, but at present it is also able to create DHTML. Code executed completely on client, but special server can also be used for this as well as servlet for dynamic compilation and RPC simplification. OpenSource.

Advantages:

- Same code for DHTML and Flash.
- XML description of interface.
- It does not have to use server side.

Disadvantages:

- Language conversion. Although LaszloScript, JavaScript and ActionScript all belong to ECMA subset, so output losses are not so serious.
- Due to its compatibility with Flash, RPC is problematic.

ZK
URL

It works similar to Echo2, only instead of Java you can use XUL based XML interface.

Advantages:

- Speed of XUL development.
- Rich set of components.
- Ability to execute custom JavaScript.

Disadvantages:

- By default processing of all events is done on server.
- Loss in output during XUL execution due to script language is resolved by using richlets or by extracting performance critical functionality to Java.

Conclusion.

In my opinion, the leaders among reviewed frameworks are ZK and Open Laszlo. But I prefer ZK since it is more logic, so to speak. I approve the approach when you can quickly create whatever you need and then freely optimize its performance.

JavaFX Thoughts

By Sibers CTO Andrey Gavrilov

Recently I’ve decided to make a short review of JavaFX which represents another case of a good idea implemented poorly.

The idea behind JavaFX is very simple – developer creates an interface oriented application using some script. Then this application can be launched from a web browser, desktop, or even from J2ME.

First point: JavaFX Mobile.
JavaFX is presented as an interface oriented language, and the interface is exactly the element which is copied with guarantee during its porting to a mobile phone. Why should be an extra extension for J2ME if mobiles have the issues with capacity even without such extensions?

Second point: Competition.
JavaFX functions on the regular Java machine, i.e. user of Windows XP and its higher versions should download full Java-Runtime in order to launch it. Taking its size into account, this is almost impossible to do. Actually it is better than Mozilla XUL, which works only in Mozilla, but worse than Microsoft Silverlight, which realizes absolutely the same ideas as Java FX but on any .NET platform. All these issues put together make JavaFX less suited for work than Adobe AIR, which is a desktop Flash, and can be launched on the web without any problems.

Third point: Extra layer.
JavaFX uses Swing which is launched on Java only. While everything functions stably, it can be used without any problems, but as soon as any errors or issues arise with Silver – all Hell breaks loose. I’ve encountered similar problems during my experiments with Grails.

It’s a pity that JavaFX has these problems because I can’t wait to see a cool Open-Source Flash Killer since I don’t trust any languages with proprietary kernel.