Yakov Fain

People are accustomed to buying goods online. If a company sells products to individuals, we call it B2C for Business To Consumers. If a business sells to other businesses – it’s B2B. Having an online store allows to sell around the clock regardless of the consumer’s location (at... (more)

This morning I’ve received the following twit by @gregsramblings “The Marriott TV system is having issues. The attached screenshot made me laugh. 14yr old OS!” The screenshot was showing a Windows 98 logo with a message that it’s shutting down. It does look funny that a major ho... (more)

I know, some people will say it’s apples to oranges. Some people will say Adobe is also pushing for HTML5. But I’m writing this for people who read the title of this blog correctly: Flex or JavaScript. Disclaimer 1. I do both. Disclaimer 2. I don’t care about game programming. I ... (more)

I’ve been using Firefox on my Mac as my default system browser for years until I got really irritated with the need to kill it once in a while after it became non-responsive. Switched to Google Chrome, but was still running Firefox for testing of my HTML/JavaScript code with the ... (more)

While JavaScript’s popularity grows daily, it’s not obvious if enterprise developers spoiled by predictable languages like Java or C# will fill comfortable with it. If they won’t – the cost of the JavaScript-based projects will remain high. Just take a look at this code snippet ... (more)

Say, you’re creating a new startup. What’s one of the most important things you need badly? Money. But how do you convince someone to give you some cash? An elevator pitch. You need to think hard and produce 2-3 (not 20-30!) sentences that clearly explain what’s your product is a... (more)

Yesterday, I was talking to my business partners (and former co-authors) about writing a new book. So far, the working title of the book is “Enterprise HTML5 and Going Mobile”. In this book we’ll explain different approaches to creating desktop and mobile Web sites and applicat... (more)

The last three days I spent participating in the QCon conference in New York City. This is one of the small group of conferences catering to software developers. Running a 100-speakers conference around the world is a hugely expensive project, and I hope the organizers broke even... (more)

When I was a teenager, my dream was to get so called Hi-Fi audio system.  I knew that some audio systems could generate sounds in the frequency range 20-20000Khz.  To have something like this would be like money from home, but those audio systems were too expensive. No, they were... (more)

In our company it became a tradition to run an annual symposium on software development in New York City. This is a technical event with zero marketing, where our engineers are given an opportunity to share their experience gained while develping real-world applications. This yea... (more)

About three months ago I blogged about an airline company that offered a seat selection Web page where the passengers could identify themselves as Facebook users. Today, I was looking for a concert tickets, and Facebook is already there too offering “See who’s sitting where optio... (more)

Yesterday, I started teaching my regular online training to people who want to learn Java programming. This class is not a part of any University program neither it’s paid for by the Unemployment Administration. It’s an open enrollment class – people from various countries either... (more)

I’ve recorded this video about IT career based on my last week’s talk at the Java developers conference in Kiev, Ukraine. This is not a technical presentation, so anybody can listen to it.  You may not agree with what I say, but hey, it’s my today’s opinion formed during my rathe... (more)

Last week I spent three days in Kiev, Ukraine participating in a new but rapidly growing Java conference titled JEEConf. During the first two days I was running two hands-on classes: one on JavaScript and another – “Intro to Java EE 6″. The one-day class “JavaScript for Java Deve... (more)

What would you think if a person visited your training registration page shown below and asked you the following question, “Yakov, when the early bird price for your JavaScript training expires?” A not so savvy Web person could’ve reacted like this, “Helloooo, can’t you read? S... (more)

About six years ago I wrote a blog titled “I have no idea what  Web 2.0 means“.  That blog had link to a video where IT leaders were helplessly trying to explain what Web 2.0 means. One guy said something like this, “Everyone wants to do it, and you can’t find enough people to do... (more)

While preparing the courseware for my upcoming JavaScript workshop I ran into the following definition in the Mozilla’s online documentation: “callee is a property of the arguments object. It can be used to refer to the currently executing function inside the function body of that... (more)

Clear Data Builder for Ext JS (CDBExt) is an open source tool that automatically builds Ext JS/Java EE CRUD applications given one or more annotated Java interfaces. The generated JavaScript and Java code enforce best Ext JS and Java EE practices and is deployed on the developmen... (more)

In May, I’m flying to Kiev, Ukraine to participate in a Java conference there and this won’t be the only conference I’ll be going to this year.  For software developers the ability to attend a major professional conference is a valuable perk given by their employers. OK, all expe... (more)

Teacher: “Mary, what do you think should happen in a Web browser when the user presses Ctrl-T?” Mary: “It should open a new tab with either a blank page or your home page. Some browsers show most recently visited sites. In any case, it should be easily configured”. Teacher: “Go... (more)