Smalltalks 2009

We will be sponsoring Smalltalks 2009, an important conference about the Smalltalk technology in different areas of application.

The conference will have two sections:
    * Scientific Research
    * Software industry

and will count with distinguished guests as Dan Ingalls, Stephane Ducasse, Alex Warth, Tim Mackinnon and James Foster.

Also, and modestly, I will be giving a talk (together with Alejandro Aguirre) about SWT (Smalltalk Web Toolkit), the technology we used to develop several projects, for example: Ceibo.

If you are interested in smarter ways to develop software shouldn't miss this event!

New Toy: Balsamiq Mockups

Some days ago I need to bid a project on a freelancers site.

After I bid my first proposal, I was selected by the customer to make a more complete proposal. Then he send me a complete description of the project he need to develop.

Such description was a bit complex and with the idiomatic barrier the things got a bit more complex.

Then, thinking in a way of show him my ideas with no place to doubts, Balsamiq Mockups came to my mind by first time to this sort of use (Not to design a real project, else to build a proposal).

Not being myself an expert on Balsamiq, else only a novice (I used it only one time before and  for a few minutes) I clicked on the Balsamiq icon and, as usual on me, I started using without read nothing and trusting on the easy of adaptation of the product. And yes, it worked!.

In a few minutes I designed two mockups with not problems and showing exactly the things I wanted to show to the possible customer. I know the customer liked this way of show an early desing of the system because "A picture is worth a thousand words".

I can suspect that Balsamiq will be with me from now on for many tasks in my company.

buscar

Retrobjects won!

The Retrobjects projects won the Innovation Technology Awards on ESUG 2009!

The main positions were:

• 1st: Retrobjects by Gabriel Eduardo Honoré
• 2nd: PhidgetLab by L. Kessler, S. Platz, T. Klingbeil, F. Schlegel, Ph. Tessenow, M. Haupt, M. Perscheid, R. Hirschfeld
• 3rd: For the first time, we got a tie. ESUG board decide to give two 3rd prizes (and not splitting the prize)
  • SqueakNOS by V. Murgia, L. Notarfrancesco, L. Caniglia, G. Richarte
  • Glamour by Ph. Bunge, T. Gîrba, L. Renggli, J. Ressia, D. Röthlisberger

The 1st and 3rd projects are from Argentina and on the 2nd also works an argentinian Smalltalker.

Congratulations to all the winners and also to all the participants!

Check the complete list of winners and nominations.

ESUG 2009 Innovation Technology Awards

The ESUG board announced that the 2009 ESUG conference will be held at the Université de Bretagne Occidentale(UBO) in Brest, France, August 31 - September 4, 2009; Camp Smalltalk 29-30 august 2009 and in the same event, the 6th Innovation Technology Awards.

Developers of any Smalltalk-based software are invited to compete. You can findout more on the previous editions and competitors on the page dedicated to the history of the ESUG Innovation Technology Awards.

The nominations to the 6th event are in this page and this year will be 5 argentinian projects between 21 nominations:

• Retrobjects (VisualWorks)
• PetroVR (Visual Smalltalk)
• SqueakNOS (Squeak)
• SqueakNxt: Programming Nxt robots with Etoys (Squeak)
• SqueakDBX (Squeak, Pharo)

Best of lucks to you all!

In the spirit of original Squeak

When I started with Squeak, sooner I meet Diego Gómez Deck, who introduced me on the original ideas of Alan Kay and other people who started Squeak project.

In our days, seems that Squeak has evolved to several different audiences, with an important focus on web development. And, being a Smalltalk, is very good for such target, as to almost any sort of software development.

Even though, part of the original spirit of Squeak was to be a tool to help childrens learn anything on the school. A tool to help teachers to develop new ways of teach, making possible new ways of learn.

Such spirit is alive on our days on Squeakland, were several of the original people from Squeak team continue working.

The Squeakland site is plenty of fresh resources to such sort of Squeak use. Enjoy it!

ClubSmalltalk and PasswordsPro Promotion

We are delighted to announce our agreement with ClubSmalltalk to sell our product PasswordsPro at a promotional price of usd 15 (Instead of the regular price of usd 29).

This agreement is focused in help this Smalltalk organization and, of course, get some new customers to our product.

Read the complete article here.