The past couple of weeks have been pretty busy within the Merapi core, but all the work has paid off. Merapi is finally open-source and available on GoogleCode. The architecture has really changed over the past year, but the core functionality has stayed the same. It's more of a change in how we get messages to the bridge than across the bridge. Regardless though, after a year of forcing you to take our word for what it's doing, you can now go get the code and see yourself.
At some point I will go over some of the changes that are coming to the Java side, but the short, short version is that we're going to be integrating tightly with Spring and leveraging some of the powerful DI that Spring gives us to make the Bridge dynamically configurable. More on that to come later though. Go over to GoogleCode, join the group and let us know what you think!
This Wednesday, if you're in the Atlanta area (that means you too Chattanooga, Macon, & Augusta), come on out to CFUnited Express. You'll get to see great topics on ColdFusion, Flex, & AIR, as well as hear from some great speakers, myself included. It's a great price point and a great lineup. Finish up your taxes, then come on over to CFUnited Express!
If you were thinking about coming to FlexCamp Miami, but thought you were too late to buy tickets, don't fret! You can walk up the day of the show and still buy tickets. There is a ton of great content and the event will be hosted by yours truly. So, hurry over and register now, or come on over the day of the show. There's still time left!
The past two years, I have spoken at cf.Objective() on mostly ColdFusion topics with a little JavaEE and AJAX thrown in for good measure. This year however, is different. I'm going to be speaking on a topic near and dear to my heart: Merapi. For those of you who don't know, Merapi is a bridge that lets you talk to Java applications running on the desktop via AIR or Flex. These presentations aren't really slide heavy, but they're very demo heavy. So, if you want to see, amongst other things, JoJo the Merapi robot, come to this session. Other demos I will show include:
AIR & GPS
AIR & RFID
AIR & MS Office
AIR & Hibernate
AIR & Text To Speech
AIR & Translation Engine
Just to give you a little taste of what you'll be seeing, here is a YouTube video of Adam, Jordan, and the robot in action:
I will be speaking at Flex Camp Miami on March 6th, 2009, along with a list of other, better known, names. This really isn't so much a Flex 101 type event as they have been in the past, but will touch on a wide array of skill-levels and give you a good feel as to what you can do with Flex and AIR. Among the speakers slated, other than myself, are:
Let's start this conversation by taking a look at what defines a "mashup". A mashup is, according to wikipedia, "a mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool". Well, that's pretty straightforward. Eventhough it's straightforward, I must contend that, like AJAX, it's nothing new. We've been doing this for years with ColdFusion, Java, and various other languages.
One of the very first ColdFusion apps I wrote combined information from a database with information from a LDAP directory. Now, I didn't call it a "mashup", it was just the application that I needed to build. ColdFusion, that tool that we all know (and most of us love), has been able to take data from multiple sources and combine them into a single integrated tool for years. So has Java via the J2EE standards, and even Microsoft has had the ability to do this for years. So why all the hoopla over mashups in the last year or so?
Mashup, the term, is brought to you by the same marketers who tried to sell you "Web 2.0" as a new buzzword. It's a term that has been coined to describe the rise of SOA as a major player in core application functionality and interoperability. Once developers got the idea that we can merge data from these disparate sources, we started to get the idea that these new types of applications, mashups, were viable as applications that can help drive business forward.
The next phase of the mashup is to combine not only data from different SOA providers, but hardware as well. Merapi is a step in this direction. With Merapi we can send data from disparate SOA sources to hardware devices and data from hardware devices into our data service providers. Hardware mashups let us move beyond what we can conceptualize in the application and go into the physical realm of hardware. It seems to me that the next generation of mashups, let's call it "Mashups 2.0", to be constant, is the marriage of existing SOA and hardware.
Are mashups a craze created by marketers? Yes. Do they have a place and a purpose? Most definitely. I have to admit, I'm much more comfortable with mashups than Web 2.0, as a term (side note: Web 2.0 is my least favorite computing term of the last ten years, but I digress), because I think mashups fosters more creativity and forces people to create new and interesting applications which may, or may not, use technologies deemed to be Web 2.0. However, do not take this to mean that mashups and Web 2.0 are mutually exclusive. Web 2.0 needs mashups to thrive in order to stay relevant. Without the mashup, Web 2.0 is just another buzzword. However, I think that mashups will be relevant long after Web 2.0 has passed us by.
Once of the questions that we get when we do the Merapi demos is "Where can I get a robot like that?". The robot is a LEGO Mindstorms NXT and can easily be purchased from Amazon or eBay. Once you get it, you should have all the parts you need to put together your own robot that you can then use Merapi to control via Bluetooth. There are enough motors and sensors included in the kit to allow your imagination to run wild. So, go get yours and start building some cool AIR / LEGO mashups today.
Dave Meeker, Adam Flater, and myself were interviewed a while ago about Merapi for The Flex Show. The episode has finally posted and is available for your enjoyment. It makes a good listen on mass transit and will have you amused and amazed.
and can easily be purchased from Amazon or eBay. Once you get it, you should have all the parts you need to put together your own robot that you can then use Merapi to control via Bluetooth. There are enough motors and sensors included in the kit to allow your imagination to run wild. So, go get yours and start building some cool AIR / LEGO mashups today. 
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