Nowadays I am doing requirement gathering and analysis for a good project here in Gibraltar.So you can imagine lot of user interactions ,taking interviews of end-users , sometimes shadowing them to their specific work function and lot of questioning etc are going on…at least project started off good and we are heading in correct direction.

For successful execution of project,the team which is going to implement or code,should get understanding of the ideas and concepts and functionality and thus the need of good mock up tool arise. These tools plays a vital role of explaining the ideas and bringing the life to boring documentation. It is truly said that “1 picture is equivalent to 1000 words!”.

In my previous projects,I had mostly used visio and its sort of standard at my workplace for mockups.Though recently I had also tried out serena prototype composer for one project.These tools have their advantages and disadvantages.

Visio is the huge software.It is not meant just for prototyping or diagramming.However,it comes at a price and it requires a lot of time to starting off and be expert with it.You can find massive features are poured on as just any other Microsoft stable software.After using visio ,I came to a conclusion that visio is good tool ,but still not a very handy tool for creating mockups quickly.

I explored a bit more on internet and found Serena Prototype composer.Serena prototype composer scores over visio ,when you want a clickable prototype.But then serena prototype composer needs to be installed where you want to run your prototype and seems to be pretty rigid kind of a tool.I didn’t like it much though it has unique advantage of creating clickable prototype.

Then again in search of perfect mockup tool,I downloaded and tried many. One day(actually night),when on the verge of just concluding that there is not so much great tool other than visio,I found the gold “Balsamiq Mockups”!!!

As a practice,Without much hopes,I downloaded and installed it.As a authentic software engineer,I never use manuals or help to use software [In fact,I had reached to conclusion that if you need help or manual for running a software,there is a problem with usability of that software]. Firing up balsamiq tools,I was just kind of landed in my dreams!! Since,it is just made for making mockups!!! Very no not friendly,I will say inviting user interface.there are all UI elements at the tops with really big and wide tool strip which shows of drag and drop user elements some common like buttons,text,all types of containers(i.e. group box,tabs etc) and some uncommon like accordion,cover flow,video player,street maps etc.The most surprising is I found sticky[comments as they call it ] and charts and graphs as well.Wow! pretty genius work.Since,many business software always need this and very few people do have mockups for this stuff.

You can create a new mockup and start building your mockup by dragging and dropping these elements.When you drag and drop the vertical and horizontal guard lines appear to assist you for placing the elements,taking care of alignments which is again cool feature.

You can set properties of individual element by selecting the element and then property bar appears out of nowhere.You can drag it anywhere so that it will not disturb you or obscure the view of element that you are working with.Also The properties are fantastic set,Just as what needed no extras .These things truly live “YAGNI(You aren’t gonna Need It!!) agile principal.

On top of this,the mock up you created can be saved or imported as XML file or can be exported as PNG files or pdf or clickable prototype.

Balsamiq Mockups team has really come up with really genius product !!

However,there is a saying that greedy man and end-user can never be satisfied 

The community of Balsamiq Mockups is also good.And they had come up with several templates that you can find at http://www.mockupstogo.net .

All in all,It is insanely great tool built by genius people out there at Balsamiq.I think I can saved at least 40% of time required to create mockups with Basamiq compared to Visio.I will certainly recommend that try your hands on Balsamiq and you will be happy making your mockups ever after. We are also thinking of this tool to be "de-facto" replacement for visio.

BTW,on special note,We just done the event on "Agile" by well known speaker Stephan Forte. He has spoken on Balsamiq for more than 5 minutes in his speech. I think that proves the mettle this tool has!

This week an open cloud manifesto has got published with intent of beginning a conversation in the direction of formulating principles for open cloud computing. The companies behind drafting this open cloud manifesto are of an opinion that innovations happening in cloud computing area in terms of standards, interoperability, integration and portability should be guided by the principles of openness.

The manifesto has covered topics like importance and need of cloud computing today and challenges and barriers for its adoption. The cloud computing manifesto has identified goals like availability of choices, flexibility in cloud computing usage, speed and agility to respond quickly to changes and open cloud computing skills. This all should help building a foundation for open standards and architecture for cloud computing.

The initiative is criticized by Microsoft calling it as a secret cloud manifesto. A blog attributed to Steven Martin, senior director of platform product management, has said in its post that the document was asked to sign 'as is' without modification or additional input. Though Microsoft admits that there should be standardization, it feels that it is too early to do that. Amazon supported the initiative and Google is yet to comment on it.

The responses from Microsoft, Amazon and Google will be helpful in guiding the future path for this open cloud manifesto.

Today while a post by Phil Wainewright who is very well known technology writer at ZDNet I came across a very convincing definition of Web 3.0. According to him Web 3.0 is technology that brings Web 2.0 and on-demand applications into the enterprise.

Enterprise Mashups is helping world achieve Web 3.0 objective. Some call it composite web application. These mashups will help combine information from enterprise search engines, web services, messaging systems, business intelligence engines and data integration solutions and combine that information from external services from all stakeholders, partners and suppliers and emerging external data sources to deliver the information at one place.

The open Web services and SOAs philosophy for application development is lowering the integration impedances and now applications are able to readily combine all web services into rich new applications. This can be a precursor for the long-awaited arrival of true software reuse.

The development language would not be as important as architecture and future thinking for development of such web applications. The key is to create virtual humanized web applications that will talk, hear and share with each other to provide true electronic communication across the supply chain. The flow towards Web 3.0 development will soon increase.

I am sure that Web 2.0 is a jargon that is living its own place and fame for now. It is no more mere marketing gimmick that web entrepreneurs were selling to its investors and venture capitalists.

In the first place some small players came with their own creative applications for Web 2.0. I will call this Web 2.0A age or rather Web 2.0.1 beta. Such applications then got popularity among users and created a news in web world. That was public version of Web 2.0.1. Some big players of web ignored what was happening around then and some took serious note and started building Web 2.0 applications. Very few intelligently bought the potential competition and started working on integration activities. This was version Web 2.0.2.

With some biggies participating in this with user base increasing day by day everybody jumped on creating and integrating web applications. Seamless movement from one application to other with single login was the mantra with 'unified user experience' tag. This was version Web 2.0.3.

So far every activity happening was limited to coding or development part of the web game. Recently IBM lauched new blade servers that are specially designed for Web 2.0 kind of web applications where traffic is heavy and computing power requirement is high. This I call a version Web 2.0.4. And I suppose the world is now ready for upgraded version of web i.e. Web 3.0.

Interesting  post from Gordon Ritter founder of Emergence Capital Partners on future of Software as a Service(SaaS) on Venturebeat.