GOOGLE'S ACCELERATED MOBILE PAGES PROJECT AIMS TO SPEED UP THE MOBILE WEB

Google unveils a plan to make the open web more tolerable in hopes of fending off Apple and Facebook.

Facing threats from Apple and Facebook, Google is teaming up with web publishers to cut down page load times on smartphones.Accelerated Mobile Pages,” or AMP, is an open framework for building lightweight webpages, optimized for mobile devices. The move is a direct answer to rival initiatives such as Apple News and Facebook Instant Articles, both of which offer fast-loading articles by cutting out cruft.The main difference with those efforts is that publishers must optimize their stories for each respective platform, causing fragmentation and creating more work. In the case of AMP, publishers still get to host the content themselves, publish through existing content management systems such as Wordpress, serve their own ads, and handle their own subscriptions. Google is just offering a set of tools to make the content load faster.AMP is also a response to the rise of ad blockers, especially on iOS where Apple recently started allowing ad-blocking in Safari. It’s no secret that unblocked pagesdemand significantly more bandwidth and take much longer to load; Google’s hope is that fewer people will install ad blockers if pages load quickly and run smoothly, and says it will allow ad formats “that don’t detract from the user experience.”The faster pages will appear when accessed through the open web, for instance through Google searches or links. Google is also partnering with tech companies such as Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, so perhaps we’ll eventually see AMP pages when opening links in their respective apps. The program is just in a preview phase for now, with BuzzFeed, Vox, and the Washington Post among the initial partners. You can check out the faster pages by visiting g.co/ampdemo on a mobile device.Why this matters: There’s been a lot of talk recently about the death of the open web at the behest of Apple and Facebook, whose new publishing platforms promise a much faster experience compared to traditional webpages. This is a major concern for Google, whose business still revolves around serving ads on webpages and in search results. It’s also an issue for publishers, especially smaller ones that lack the resources to optimize for numerous closed platforms. But if anything, AMP shows that this competition is a good thing, as it has prompted Google to do something about sluggish, overloaded webpages.

AMAZON LAUNCHES QUICKSIGHT BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE SERVICE

AWS chief Andy Jassy unveils Amazon Quicksight at the company's AWS Re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, Nevada on Oct. 7, 2015.

As companies generate more and more data, one of the key things they need to do is find some way to make it all useful from a business standpoint. 

Business intelligence software has long been a way to help with that, and Amazon threw its hat into the ring Wednesday with a service called QuickSight, provided through its Amazon Web Services division. It was announced at the company's AWS Re:Invent conference in Las Vegas. 

Amazon

An example of AWS QuickSight's ability to graph data.

The service will pull in all of the data businesses have stored in Amazon's cloud from sources including Redshift, DynamoDB, Elastic Map Reduce and even flat files that companies have stored in AWS's Simple Storage Service (S3). It also works with Salesforce, Oracle and files that users upload directly. The service will then generate graphs it thinks that users want, and suggest different variables that users should compare against one another. 

Once users have pulled up a visualization that they're interested in, they can then refine the data, and pull in other information into a single graph or chart. Once they have charts that they like, they can then share the interactive data with other people inside their company as a "storyboard."

In addition to a Web interface for the service, Amazon also has native mobile apps for iOS and Android for viewing QuickSight on mobile. That's important for companies that have large tablet deployments, or those who just want to make sure that their employees are able to access business intelligence data on the go. 

It's all powered by a new query engine Amazon calls the Super-fast Parallel In-memory Computation Engine (SPICE), which is supposed to be faster to use than traditional engines, thanks to a combination of technology including columnar storage, data compression and machine code generation. 

The service comes in two flavors: a standard edition that costs $9 per user per month with an annual commitment, and an enterprise edition that costs $18 per user per month when companies commit to using it for a year. The enterprise edition offers additional features like support for Active Directory integration and encryption at rest. 

Amazon isn't the only major cloud provider with its own data visualization suite. Microsoft has been heavily pushing its own Power BI tool, which integrates with both its database services and third-party providers. Unveiling QuickSight also puts Amazon in competition with one of its neighbors and customers: Seattle-based Tableau Software, which runs its data visualization and business intelligence tool on AWS. 

dhtmlxSuite 4.5: List Control, Sidebar Drawer and Responsive Web App

October 6th, 2015

In case you’re looking for a JavaScript library for creating responsive web applications with less efforts, we have great news for you! dhtmlxSuite 4.5 update brings you a sidebar navigation drawer – a very convenient three-line menu feature that is widely used in the majority of mobile/tablet apps. Moreover, you now have the opportunity to learn and test our new demo application, that will serve you as a good example for getting know how to develop responsive web applications with DHTMLX.

Apart from it, we have a new component, several new features and many bug fixes and small improvements. So, here is a summary for you.

New responsive demo – apps for desktop, tablet and mobile

We invite you to check DHTMLX CRM demo application. You may open it on different devices and see how it works (use QR code below for mobiles and tablets). This example shows that by using the basic functionality of dhtmlx components, you can create fully responsive web applications.

Open the demo on tablet and mobile

dhtmlxList control

New component is here! Meet dhtmlxList, a JavaScript UI control for displaying items in a list view. List comes with a range of the most useful features – filtering, sorting, drag-and-drop, paging, and more.

Check the live demo on its page and other samples.