Devoxx (formerly known as Javapolis), The java community conference, is THE European conference on Java that "java addicts", developers, solutions editors based on this technology, etc., shouldn't miss under no pretext. Will you be there?

This 7th edition is organized by the BEJUG (Java User Group Belge) and will take place on December 8th 2008 at in the cinematographic complex MetroPolis in Antwerp (Belgium).

Just like last year, you will have: University, Conference, Quickies (15 minute talks during the lunch break of both the University and Conference), Tools in action (30 minute talks during the Devoxx University days), Whiteboards, etc.

There will be a lot of different and interesting topics covered: Java EE6, REST, scripting languages, OSGI, Scala, Web Beans, BPM, and much more subjects.

Vincent, Sergiu, Guillaume and Marta will be there from 10 to 12 December. As usual, they will be present on OW2's stand along with partners such as eXoplatform. Come to see them to ask questions, discuss about our technologies and so on.

Innovations won't miss. You could discover the last evolutions and functionalities of the 1.7 version of XWiki Enterprise :

• A new rendering;
• The first version of the new WYSIWYG editor, more powerful;
• The integration of the Webdav module which allows accessing the wiki from a files navigator;

And also:

• The last version of XEclipse, our XML/RPC client that allows the edition of your wiki in the deskstop;
• A demo of the integration of Balsamiq Mockups plugin in XWiki Enterprise.

Google Street View allows users to navigate 360 degrees to view street level images from any angle. The system was launched in 2007 and first introduced in the United States. Then, more countries were added : France, Spain, Italy, Australia and Japan. Of course, not all the cities can be virtually visited and Google selected only few big ones. In France, the "Google cars" (with cameras) visited 6 of them: Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Lille and Toulouse.

Did you have a look at it? At XWiki, we could not resist to temptation:

  

We can see there the logo of XWiki, but also one of our project managers, Stephan Barbey, and our assistant Meryame Rami.

This system inevitably creates problems of confidentiality and safety concerning the publication of faces and number plates on Internet. There were several reactions from net surfers. Google made some efforts to address the complaints (the company didn't have the choice):

• Google developed a system to blur automatically number plates and faces of people who are filmed;
• It is possible to request image removal by filling a form.

From Ludovic Dubost (via his tweet Twitter), our CEO : "Our XWiki logo shows up in our office front window in Google Street View ! Nice !"

Asiri, by Asiri

Hello Everyone!

I'm Asiri Rathnayake from Kurunegala, Sri-Lanka. Presently I'm working on the XWiki's new WebDAV server implementation.

I'm a graduate from University Of Moratuwa, Srilanka where I specialized in Computer Science & Engineering. My favourite subjects include Theory of Computing, Compiler Theory, Programming Languages and Operating Systems. Also, as of today I'm conducting lectures on Operating Systems (Assistant Lecturer) at the same university.

How I got to know XWiki is through Google Summer of Code 2007. Actually, I wasn't part of GSoC 2007 but started working with one of my friends who was selected for GSoC 2007. Together we developed the initial versions of XEclipse which has now turned into a great application / plugin. Then again in 2008 I officially got selected for GSoC where I developed the initial version of the current WebDAV implementation.

I enjoy solving challenging problems, and I'm really enthusiastic about Software Architecture and Design Patterns. When I look at my code and realize that it looks like a nicely built solid concrete structure, I feel a sense of satisfaction that is really hard to explain. Above all, I feel very bad when my code start to smell… it's really difficult to go to sleep on such days :)

Finally, I hope to become such a developer who'd provide smart yet simple solutions to large and complex problems. Obviously, working with XWiki is going to help me get there soon :)

Asiri

XWiki will be at Devoxx 2008 in Antwerp, Belgium to launch and demo the latest version of XWiki Enterprise, our professional wiki solution.

As usual, we will be present on OW2's stand along with partners such as eXoplatform.

Vincent Massol (XWiki's CTO), Sergiu Dumitriu (one of the lead developers on XWiki), Marta Girdea (XWiki contributer and committer) and Guillaume Lerouge (Product manager at XWiki) will be present to demo our solutions and answer your questions.

Come and join us in Antwerp from December 10th to 12th!

We're glad to announce that Balsamiq Studios is now an official XWiki partner ! Balsamiq builds plugins on top of existing solutions such as XWiki Enterprise. As Peldi, Balsamiq's founder, puts it :

He has been busy working on making his great Balsamiq Mockups available as a XWiki Plugin of late, and we're very impressed by the results of his work (and so are his customers). That's why we decided to become a Balsamiq Studios technical partner & official reseller.

A Balsamiq mockup embedded in a XWiki Enterprise page :

What the plugin does

In a few words, here's what Balsamiq Mockups for XWiki allows you to do:

• Create a software interface mockup in few seconds using a set of available UI elements
• Perform this task online, right on your wiki page and embed the resulting mockup in the wiki page you're working on
• Let other wiki users edit the mockup afterwards and show the results immediately on the page

So you can work together on quick software prototyping more easily than ever before! Check out the video for more details:

Balsamiq Mockups for XWiki Intro.

Since Balsamiq leverages the Adobe AIR framework, a Desktop Edition of the product is available as well. We're very proud of this great extension to the already rich XWiki Enterprise feature set. Thanks Peldi !

The Balsamiq Mockups editor :

Our partnership policy

A couple months after XWiki got started, Ludovic chose to change XWiki's license from the GPL to the more business-friendly LGPL. This means that external developers have no restriction whatsoever should they choose to provide commercial extensions on top of our platform (which isn't necessarily the case with the GPL license). Therefore, we're glad to welcome partners willing to deliver extensions to the XWiki platform and product line through both open and closed-source code.

XWiki SAS, the company behind XWiki, will keep offering its code under the LGPL. However, we're certainly open to pursuing partnerships with companies willing to go the closed route. We're very happy about having innovative technology made available on top of the XWiki platform and look forward similar initiatives in the future. Contact us at [partners@xwiki.com?] if you'd like to find out more about our partnership opportunities.

Find out more about Balsamiq Mockups for XWiki on Peldi's Blog !

We took part to the Paris Capitale du Libre event that was held in Paris last week.

               

The event features the Lutèces d'Or awards ceremony, which spotlights the best-in-class open-source software projects and actions of the year in France and in Europe in different categories. Alexandre Zapolsky, the Fnill president and Linagora's CEO, said that the event will become even more international next year.

This year, the main winners were OpenOffice.org and the Ile-de-France region (you will find all the winners list here (albeit in French)). OpenOffice.org received the Best Open Source project carried out on a world level (except France) prize and the Ile-de-France received received the Grand Prix du jury. Back in 2006, XWiki had received the price of the Best Open Source project carried out for an enterprise.

Why speak mainly about these two winners? Two reasons :

• Ludovic Dubost and myself had the honor of having those two winners at the XWiki table (there was one table by partner) :
  • Charles-H. Schulz, is the lead of the Native-Language Confederation of OpenOffice.org
  • Jean-Baptiste Roger, technical adviser for the Ile-de-France area.
• The 2 prizes rewarded
  • For OpenOffice: the work and the implication of a whole community during 8 years. Double reward, because the remote loadings of OpenOffice become exponential. A chance? Anyway, a beautiful surprise for Charles-H. Schulz. OpenOffice.org already received several other prices this year: OpenOffice.org was awarded three prizes in the SourceForge.net 2008 Community Choice Awards and was considered the "Best of open source productivity application" an award chosen by InfoWorld Test Center editors, analysts, and reviewers. The proof that the work and the implication on a long run of a community bear its fruits to the international level!
  • For the Ile-de-France region : the motivation of Jean-Baptiste Roger who never stopped believing in his action, whereas all and everyone were leagued against him. Defending the "open source way" is often a tough fight. His enthusiasm and his joy are equivalent to his engagement and his faith. Both play an important role in the Open Source World ; -)

               

Bernard Lang, a famous INRIA researcher, was at our table as well. Thanks to Ludovic who pointed him out to me since I didn't know him nor suspected he was a celebrity. Bernard Lang is a very funny guy and he is very intelligent too. In the next weeks, I will publish a focus on OpenOffice and its growth, another on Bernard Lang and his work promoting the Open Source World and hopefully a last one on Jean-Baptiste Roger.

To be continued…

Hello all!

I'm Artem Melentyev, from Yekaterinburg, Russia. I'm working (half time) on XWiki Platform with Storage&Query specialization since May 2008.

Also I'm at 2nd year of study on master of computer science at Ural State University.

My study topic is extensible languages and I use my knowledge in new experimental XWiki Query Language which is extended JPQL syntactically.

I'm also working on new XWiki storage system based on Java Content Repository standard.

I met XWiki at spring 2005 thank for Google Summer of Code grant. XWiki attracted me by great programming abilities. It was and is greatest wiki ever for me. I attended at GSoC 3 times:

• 2005: Independent Query Language (QueryPlugin) project.
  • I implemented xpath to hql translator using Jackrabbit query engine. This language has some limited expressive power and became obsoleted now by XWQL.
• 2006: JcrStore
  • I implemented experimental storage based on Jackrabbit content repository. Design was not so good and contained much code duplication with Hibernate based storage. Now, I'm working on a completely revised version of JcrStore.
• 2007: Storage improvements.
  • I added features such as minor edit feature, recycle bin for deleted documents, new versioning system for documents.

I like programming and hard tasks. That is why I participated a lot in various programming contests. My greatest achievement was paticipate in ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals in San Antonio, Texas at 2006 and 5th place in Semi Finals. ACM competitions gave me a great algorithmic, math and programming knowledge.

Just after my ACM ICPC career ended I joined XWiki as a remote developer. I like this work. I always wanted to be an open source developer. And now, I am! Thanks to XWiki for its great wiki and its great team.

Ludovic & I gave a tutorial on getting started with XWiki here at WIKISYM 2008? in Porto. We covered a couple XWiki Enterprise basics (Powerful Access Rights Management, the Panel Wizard and Statistics) before demoing the creation of a full-fledged application in real time.

Our public during the tutorial.

Ludovic while writing an application in front of the audience.

A top down view on the room we were in - the University of Porto is providing us with a great setting !

We were quite happy with the tutorial, as were people from the audience - at least judging from those twitter messages : 1, 2 & 3 !! (More here, here and there.)

Hi there! I'm Toussaint, I've been an internal at XWiki for almost a month now and I'm really pleased I did this.

The idea for me was to get closer to the enterprise environment for my personal experience, as I'm intending to get into a french business school. What I found at XWiki was a nice and joyful atmosphere that leads to efficient collaborative work.

Once I got more familiar with XWiki and its products, my first task was to study XWiki's competitors and their products in order to define which features of XWiki could be improved and which were specific and had to be kept!

Then, I helped a team write and translate XWiki Enterprise and XWiki Watch user guides. My inexperience on the wikis was obviously my first quality for this kind of work, as I could easily realize which parts were clear and which were just too complicated for me as a novice.

Finally, as I got more and more familiar with the firm, its products and more importantly its employees, I even started working on the improvements of the interface and the layout of the newest versions of their products.

I'm really glad I did this, it went over my expectations! I do realize I won't find that kind of atmsophere easily in the future, merging serious work attitude and chilled friendly team relations. This is why I am enjoying my last few days here and telling you about what I got to live!

OK, there we go. There's this festival going on in Glastonbury and you managed to get to play in it. When I say you, I mean your crazy drummer Charlie, the lonesome acoustic guitar player Bill, your gorgeous piano master Mary calling herself "Queen of the Hills", John the saxophonist, Alison and Sarah the chorists, Sean the bass player, your sound engineer Mike… AND you.

After a first minute of bloody excitment about all this, you start wondering how the ** you are going to prepare it. You don't even manage to make those guys meet once a week to play all together! How could you possibly get ready to play for thirty-five minutes in front of two thousand people who don't even know your names...?

Calm down, chill out, take a deep breath and start thinking about what a wiki could do for you, you will see things get a lot easier.

You got an issue there...

The real problem is called organization. Surrounded by messy fellows who are never on time and can't stand having a talk about plans, you don't know how you could make sure everything's ready on time with everyone working on it.

A wiki presents here all the features to make your work much more pleasant. You want everyone to participate, and to check that none of your mates is doing absolutely nothing? Every user of a wiki can create, edit and comment pages to work as a team. You can see who did each modification and therefore… who didn't! You need a place to organize all your tasks without mixing them all and forgetting half of your work? A wiki is structured by you through easy-to-create links between independant pages that can be grouped in spaces. Let's see together why a wiki is the best way for you to play better than you ever have in that festival...

What has to be done?

First of all, let's sum up together all the tasks you want to realize. You will need :

• a way to see the latest news, modifications and works of your friends and yourself
• a way to list all the equipment you need to use, with a way to know which is available and ready and which is not
• a way to talk to each member of the band, see what they are working on, and get information about them (email, phone number...)
• a way to let your music be heard by you and by others, to start conversations about the improvements that could be made and to let your fans express their admiration...
• a way to make sure you can organize repetitions and that everyone will be there!
• a way to spread informal information about the band (news, messages...)
• a way to keep a memory of your concert

The Wiki Solution

There we go. I think it's time you realize a wiki is the best way to fulfil your need. A wiki is easy to use and allows you to start efficient collaborative work. Let's see what features are particularly interesting for you here :

• A home page, easily accessible, allows you to present briefly the purpose of your wiki, and the way it works.
• The "What's New" page displays the latest modifications that were made by any user to make sure you are up to date and you know exactly how far your band got in its preparing work
• New pages can be created very easily, for example to list the equipment you need. As you can edit it very easily, you can always strikethrough the things that have been done, or highlight the urgent ones.
• Each member of the band has a profile where he or she can add a photo, personal information, a quick description… This tool allows the members selected by this user to see this information and be able to contact the person easily.
• Thanks to a strong user rights interface, you can easily choose to let your wiki public, but preventing any public viewer from editing pages or even add comments if you don't want them to. You can also leave some pages public to make yourself get famous, while you restrict the access to more private pages (such as the ones you use to organize your concert) to the members you want.
• Wiki pages are not simply text pages. If you want people to know what your music sounds like, you can easily attach your songs to your wiki and let them be heard by your future spectators!
• What's really cool is that even though you never manage to talk about your songs with all your mates because you always want to start playing when you manage to meet, you can now start conversations about them thanks to the comments available at the bottom of each page… where you will give your impressions and tell about the improvements you reckon have to be done.
• The calendar allows you to insert events and that way to organize in advance your repetitions and remind your friends about the concert without having to spend the night trying to get them all on the phone...
• Thanks to the blog available in your wiki, you can regularly spread messages or news about the band and your music.
• You can also use the photo album to display your photos on stage to show everyone what you've done!

A Wiki really is the solution for your problem, as it will help you organize your concert in a simple way, allowing all the members of your old band to work together and be efficient, without having to take time on your repetitions...

What are you waiting for mate?! Start your own wiki, get organized, get known, get chilled… Wiki is the way to go. And your band will definitely thank you for having had such a great idea!