Job Security

Some consider unmaintainable code a tool that provides job security. At the low level, you can obtain such code through incorrect or inconsistent formatting, naming, and commenting. Complex and gratuitous coupling, lack of assertions, and failure to use a language's type system can further complicate the picture. At a higher level, deep and wide class hierarchies, lack of cohesion, and unhelpful package relationships can hinder maintainability. Finally, at the development process level, lack of version control, subpar build-and-release procedures, a lacking testing infrastructure, and the hiring of mediocre developers will hammer the last nails into a project's maintainability coffin.     

Explore, excogitate, exploit: component mining

The author describes a process of component mining. His source of candidate components, or his “mine”, is a set of highly respected components from an earlier generation: the famous Unix utilities. He shows how to identify the most promising of these candidates and re-encapsulate them in components that satisfy today's views of component based development, based on the principles of object technology     

Where's My Jetpack?

Software development tools often fail to deliver on inflated promises. Rather than the predicted progression toward ever-increasing levels of abstraction, two simple trends have driven the evolution of currently available software development tools: integration at the source-code level and a focus on quality. Thus source code has become the bus that tools tap into for communicating with other tools. Also, focus has shifted from defect removal in the later phases to defect prevention in the earlier phases. In the future, tools are likely to support higher levels of abstraction, perhaps in the form of domain-specific languages communicated using XML.     

Position-annotated photographs: A Geotemporal Web

With the advent of digital cameras, photographs are no longer gathering dust, forgotten in old shoeboxes. Instead, they are lying unused in hard disk dircctories and on CDs. The Geotemporal Web system, belonging to the "capture and access" class of ubiquitous computing applications, addresses this phenomenon by automatically converting raw data from the typical vacation trip into a lively Web site. Exploiting the synergies of integrating different consumer-grade information appliances and publicly accessible databases, a GTWeb site presents a trip overview, timelines, maps, and annotated photographs.     

Unix tools as visual programming components in a GUI‐builder environment

Development environments based on ActiveX controls and JavaBeans are marketed as ‘visual programming’ platforms; in practice their visual dimension is limited to the design and implementation of an application's graphical user interface (GUI). The availability of sophisticated GUI development environments and visual component development frameworks is now providing viable platforms for implementing visual programming within general‐purpose platforms, i.e. for the specification of non‐GUI program functionality using visual representations. We describe how specially designed reflective components can be used in an industry‐standard visual programming environment to graphically specify sophisticated data transformation pipelines that interact with GUI elements. The components are based on Unix‐style filters repackaged as ActiveX controls. Their visual layout on the development environment canvas is used to specify the connection topology of the resultant pipeline. The process of converting filter‐style programs into visual controls is automated using a domain‐specific language. We demonstrate the approach through the design and the visual implementation of a GUI‐based spell‐checker. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Coping with TiVo: Opportunities of the networked digital video recorder

Despite the progressive switch to digital TV, there has not been any significant change to the value chain of the TV industry. At the same time, the introduction of novel information and communication technologies, such as the digital video recorder (DVR) and efficient Peer-to-Peer (P2P) content distribution, have been regarded as a threat to the established broadcast business players. Previous research has described these threats and has suggested competitive strategies, but it has not investigated the opportunities. This work aims to identify a framework of new business models that take advantage of the networked DVR. For this purpose, we examined the TV literature from diverse academic disciplines, such as mass communication, computer engineering and advertising research. We have also collaborated with network and multimedia engineers, with broadcasters, and we examined novel interactive television (ITV) prototypes. The findings suggest that the networked DVR could be exploited to provide personalized channels and that the dynamic advertising insertion could be introduced as an effective advertising format. In the light of these findings, the TV industry should consider the pro-active adoption and facilitation of the networked DVR infrastructure.