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Scott Davis
Author of "Groovy Recipes"
Scott published one of the first public websites implemented in Grails in 2006 and has been actively working with the technology ever since. Author of the book Groovy Recipes: Greasing the Wheels of Java and two ongoing IBM developerWorks article series (Mastering Grails and in 2009, Practically Groovy), Scott writes extensively about how Groovy and Grails are the future of Java development.
Presentations
Lizard Brain Web Design
"There's an old story about the person who wished his computer were as easy to use as his telephone. That wish has come true, since I no longer know how to use my telephone." (Bjarne Stroustrup)
The "lizard brain" is the oldest part of the human brain -- the part responsible for autonomic functions like breathing, heart rate, and navigating websites. OK, maybe not that last part, but your website should be easy to use. Stupid easy. Lizard brain easy. Any time your user spends figuring out how to do something -- even for a split second -- is wasted time due to poor design. Inspired by Steve Krug's book "Don't Make Me Think", this talk answers the question, "Why is that website so hard to use?"
In this talk, we look at what make a "good" website "good". Simple changes in the layout or sort order can yield drastic improvements. We'll get inside the heads of typical users and see how their view of our website is drastically different than what we painstakingly planned out. You'll learn how to cater to "Browsers" and "Searchers" -- the human kind, not the software kind. "Lizard Brain Web Design" answers these questions and more in a funny and informative way.
Web 2.0 Checklist: Deconstructing Modern Websites
"The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned." (Antonio Gramsci)
There are plenty of sarcastic "Web 2.0" checklists out there -- be perpetually in BETA, when in doubt add rounded corners, etc. While we can all laugh at the superficial aspects of the Web 2.0 revolution, there are plenty of serious aspects to it as well. Is your website mash-up friendly or hostile? Do you tell your visitors when things change (via RSS or Atom syndication), or do you expect them to check in daily for updates? Is your website a silo or a part of a larger ecosystem?
In this talk, we discuss what makes a "modern shiny Web 2.0" website look the way it does. But we go beyond simple look and feel as we catalog the common features in modern websites and show you how to implement them yourself.
Solr: Adding Lucene Search to your Website
"A man travels the world over in search of what he needs, and returns home to find it." (George Moore)
Without search capabilities, the web wouldn't be nearly as useful as it is today. Public websites have the luxury of letting Google do the indexing for them. For business applications that run behind the firewall, you need to go the extra step yourself. Lucene is an incredibly powerful open source indexing library. Solr makes it trivial to roll out Lucene by offering RESTful and JSON-based interfaces.
In this talk, we'll add local search capabilities to an existing website. We'll make indexing a natural part of the CRUD lifecycle, and demonstrate how easy it is to get Google-like capabilities behind the firewall.
Books
by Scott Davis
List Price: $34.95
Price: $25.51
You Save: $9.44 (27%)
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Each recipe in Groovy Recipes begins with a concise code example for a quick start, followed by in-depth explanation in plain English. These recipes will get you to-to-speed in a Groovy environment quickly.
You'll see how to speed up nearly every aspect of the development process using Groovy. Groovy makes mundane file management tasks like copying and renaming files trivial. Reading and writing XML has never been easier with XmlParsers and XmlBuilders. Breathe new life into Arrays, Maps, and Lists with a number of convenience methods. But Groovy does more than just ease traditional Java development: it brings modern programming features to the Java platform like closures, duck-typing, and metaprogramming.
As an added bonus, this book also covers Grails. You'll be amazed at how quickly you can have a first-class web application up and running from ground zero. Grails includes everything you need in a single zip file⎯a web server (Jetty), a database (HSQLDB), Spring, Hibernate, even a Groovy version of Ant called GANT. We cover everything from getting a basic website in place to advanced features that take you beyond HTML into the world of Web Services: REST, JSON, Atom, Podcasting, and much much more.
Price: $25.51
You Save: $9.44 (27%)
-
Each recipe in Groovy Recipes begins with a concise code example for a quick start, followed by in-depth explanation in plain English. These recipes will get you to-to-speed in a Groovy environment quickly.
You'll see how to speed up nearly every aspect of the development process using Groovy. Groovy makes mundane file management tasks like copying and renaming files trivial. Reading and writing XML has never been easier with XmlParsers and XmlBuilders. Breathe new life into Arrays, Maps, and Lists with a number of convenience methods. But Groovy does more than just ease traditional Java development: it brings modern programming features to the Java platform like closures, duck-typing, and metaprogramming.
As an added bonus, this book also covers Grails. You'll be amazed at how quickly you can have a first-class web application up and running from ground zero. Grails includes everything you need in a single zip file⎯a web server (Jetty), a database (HSQLDB), Spring, Hibernate, even a Groovy version of Ant called GANT. We cover everything from getting a basic website in place to advanced features that take you beyond HTML into the world of Web Services: REST, JSON, Atom, Podcasting, and much much more.
by Scott Davis
List Price: $34.95
Price: $25.51
You Save: $9.44 (27%)
-
There is a hidden revolution going on: geography is moving from niche to the mainstream. News reports routinely include maps and satellite images. More and more pieces of equipment cell phones, cars, computers now contain Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers. Many of the major database vendors have made geographic data types standard in their flagship products.
GIS for Web Developers introduces Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in simple terms and demonstrates hands-on uses. With this book, you'll explore popular websites like maps.google.com, see the technologies they use, and learn how to create your own. Written with the usual Pragmatic Bookshelf humor and real-world experience, GIS for Web Developers makes geographic programming concepts accessible to the common developer.
This book will demystify GIS and show you how to make GIS work for you. You'll learn the buzzwords and explore ways to geographically-enable your own applications. GIS is not a fundamentally difficult domain, but there is a barrier to entry because of the industry jargon. This book will show you how to "walk the walk" and "talk the talk" of a geographer.
You'll learn how to find the vast amounts of free geographic data that's out there and how to bring it all together. Although this data is free, it's scattered across the web on a variety of different sites, in a variety of incompatible formats. You'll see how to convert it among several popular formats including plain text, ESRI Shapefiles, and Geography Markup Language (GML).
With this book in hand, you'll become a real geographic programmer using the Java programming language. You'll find plenty of working code examples in Java using some of the many GIS-oriented applications and APIs. You'll be able to:
Find free sources of GIS data on the web Browse GIS data using open source desktop viewers Manipulate GIS data programmatically Store and retrieve data using geographically-enabled databases Explore free web toolkits like Google Maps Publish and consume web services using Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) interfaces
Price: $25.51
You Save: $9.44 (27%)
-
There is a hidden revolution going on: geography is moving from niche to the mainstream. News reports routinely include maps and satellite images. More and more pieces of equipment cell phones, cars, computers now contain Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers. Many of the major database vendors have made geographic data types standard in their flagship products.
GIS for Web Developers introduces Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in simple terms and demonstrates hands-on uses. With this book, you'll explore popular websites like maps.google.com, see the technologies they use, and learn how to create your own. Written with the usual Pragmatic Bookshelf humor and real-world experience, GIS for Web Developers makes geographic programming concepts accessible to the common developer.
This book will demystify GIS and show you how to make GIS work for you. You'll learn the buzzwords and explore ways to geographically-enable your own applications. GIS is not a fundamentally difficult domain, but there is a barrier to entry because of the industry jargon. This book will show you how to "walk the walk" and "talk the talk" of a geographer.
You'll learn how to find the vast amounts of free geographic data that's out there and how to bring it all together. Although this data is free, it's scattered across the web on a variety of different sites, in a variety of incompatible formats. You'll see how to convert it among several popular formats including plain text, ESRI Shapefiles, and Geography Markup Language (GML).
With this book in hand, you'll become a real geographic programmer using the Java programming language. You'll find plenty of working code examples in Java using some of the many GIS-oriented applications and APIs. You'll be able to:
Find free sources of GIS data on the web Browse GIS data using open source desktop viewers Manipulate GIS data programmatically Store and retrieve data using geographically-enabled databases Explore free web toolkits like Google Maps Publish and consume web services using Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) interfaces
