The Colossus of Rhodes

now. lets get things started. lets talk about innovation.

for a well-known reason (at least) once a year i am in greece. this year we also went to rhodos to see the colossus. 

question is: was this innovation? i mean, is it innovative to come up with the idea to build something like the colossus?

what is the nature of innovation? how is it for instance different from creativity?

there are obviously lots of websites that offer a definition of creativity and innovation. there are also attempts to define the difference between creativity and innovation. 

fortunately i had one of my most trusted advisors with me and the conclusion of the discussion is, that creativity is about ideas and innovation is about results. Creativity is the at the core of innovation, but not every creative idea is also actually innovative, because innovation always serves a purpose. Innovation is directed towards a goal. It strives to improve a situation in a given context.

"Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things." Theodore Levitt (Havard Buisness School)

i think the colussus was a creative idea, but have him hold up the fire to find the harbour was innovative.

next: is the iphone creative or innovative?

Apache-CXF generates client-side SOAP stack for the iPhone

Yep. It was inevitable. Sooner or later we need to talk about the iPhone.

And there is a lot to talk about ...

• the innovative hardware
• the business model behind it
• the market this device might be able to create
• and a lot of other disruptive changes that come with it

But today I just want to talk about a neat feature that I discovered in Apache-CXF.

In January I was looking for ways to make the mobile device a first-class citizen in a distributed SOA. Right now, there are probably three platforms types that you can consider when it comes to mobile devices and the integration of mobile devices with (SOA) backend systems:

• Native - means you are using a platform SDK (e.g. .Net, Symbian, iPhone SDK) and write applications directly for a given platform.
  
• JAVA - means you are using the JAVA ME platform. Potentially/Hopefully in combination with an OSGi container.
• Browser - means you are using a browser and implement your application as (AJAX-based) WebApplications (XHTML, CSS, JavaScript (with XmlHttpRequest objects).

Right now, you can develop applications for the iPhone using option 1 and 3. Option 2 is not an option, because there is no JVM for the iPhone (but SUN recently announce that this will change later in the year :)).

Option 3 got a lot of merits, but leaves you with the daunting task to write all of the JavaScript marshaling code yourself :(.

And here is where the miracle happens: The next version of Apache-CXF (2.1) has a feature that allows you to generate JavaScript client-side code for WebServices. Either from an WSDL file or from annotated JAVA source code or dynamically at runtime.

It makes writing WebApplications for the iPhone so much easier.

I have ported some of the CXF demos to the iPhone. The podcast, the presentation and the source code is available on open.iona.com and on www.tritsch.org.

Check it out. Feedback welcome.

Sorry :) ...

I was not really happy with the generated blog. Had to redo it. Apologies to the thousands of people, who have already subscribed to the RSS feed :(. You have to do it again :(. But this time you get an ATOM feed :).

Hello world :)

Wow. Finally!!! Twelve month ago, I decided that living 42 years without a Mac was long enough. This is not surprising, because as we all know, according to Douglas Adams it takes 42 (of whatever unit) to discover the sense of live.

 

Anyway, ...

 

Triggered by this event I also decided to renovate my website and voila, .... (only :)) twelve month later: Here we are. A/The brand new website. Cool.

 

As Johnny Corba likes to say: But wait there is more!!!

 

It is not only a brand new website, there is also a brand new blog that comes with it. And it talks about innolocity. What the hell is innolocity? Innolocity is the velocity (or speed) of innovation. Something that we need to get right. For our organizations and maybe in general for our lives. If you innovate to fast or at the wrong time, you will waste energy and you will not get a good return on investment, because you move on too fast to early and you will more often than less jump on the wrong bandwagon.  If you do not innovate fast enough and hold on to what you know and love for to long, you will miss chances. Chances to learn, chances to be part of something or lead something.

 

Innovate as fast as possible, but not to fast.

 

Ok, I admit it upfront: This blog will also allow me to talk about a lot of other cool stuff: Gadgets, Trends, Ideas, Thoughts and Events.

 

Just to get it going: Here is a list of things, we can/should talk about in the foreseeable future ...

 

1. • How disruptive/innovative is the iPhone?
2. • Is opensource fostering or killing innovation?
3. • Should you visit the Science Gallery in Dublin?

 

So far, so good. It seems I am done with my first blog entry on my brand new website.