Some of our Sri Lankan visitors wanted to see a bit more of the Silicon Valley than the inside of our conference rooms where we’ve been working all week.  Follows is a little driving tour I took them on to see some of the local sights, both large and small.

1. WSO2 Mountain View office:  Aspiring to someday be part of Silicon Valley lore, a fitting place to start when looking in the rear view mirror of history. http://wso2.com
2. Fairchild Semiconductor: After the invention of the IC at Shockley Laboratories, mass defections spurred the development of the integrated circuit by the eventual founders of Intel Corporation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Semiconductor
3. The GooglePlex: Formerly the site of Silicon Graphics campus, Google is the current symbol of Silicon Valley entrepreneurial success.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Campus
4. The Computer History Museum:  Ironically located in the former Silicon Graphics Executive Offices building, vacated not long after occupation - a poster child for the valley’s perpetual boom-bust cycle.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_History_Museum
5. Apple Computer:  Famous for bringing computer technology to the general public through a continuing emphasis on usability.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_computer
6. Stanford University: the intellectual force that anchored Silicon Valley here rather than elsewhere.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford
7. Stanford Linear Accelerator: Not really central to Silicon Valley history, but it is big and impressive and highlights Stanford’s role in attracting scientific talent to the area. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLAC
8. Sand Hill Road: the center of VC in the valley.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_Hill_Road
9. Hewlett-Packard Garage: considered the "birthplace of Silicon Valley" - the prototype of the garage entrepreneurial culture.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_garage

The tour ends conveniently near to the best Ginger Gelato in the Whole Universe.

I’m proud to say that v1.5 of the WSO2 Mashup Server is now available for download!  This release has been a few months in the making, and I’m thrilled to see a major update to the Mashup Server finally out.  News release here. 

Thanks to the efforts of Keith, Tyrell, Channa, Yumani, and many others at WSO2, we’ve been able to put some snazzy new features in this release:

• Integrated award-winning Data Services: quickly and with zero-coding map queries on your databases, Excel spreadsheets, or CSV files into Web services.
• Google Gadgets: power a Google gadget with a mashup service - we generate a try-it, a code template for customizing the gadget, and even a build in Gadget dashboard based on Apache Shindig.
• Security, security, security: Limit access to your mashup service to only authorized users, encrypt and sign your messages, and access services which are secured.  I think our security interface is the easiest way to engage advanced WS-Security features that’s out there!
• OpenID login support.

There’s lots of little improvements too, and I hope to talk about those, as well as the major features above, in upcoming posts.

For now though, a hearty congratulations and a good night’s sleep to the Mashup Server team!

Yumani has published a nice tutorial on Sending Instant Messages via Mashup Server showing how to use the instant messaging capabilities built into the WSO2 Mashup Server.  I think the ability to have instant alerts as part of your mashup is a cool feature, and as Yumani shows in this article, they are pretty trivial to do.

I’m looking forward to adding the next step in a future release - the ability to invoke a mashup using instant messaging.  Then we’ll have a scriptable platform for building agents that can communicate via IM.  Imagine converting your favorite service to an IM conversational interface.  Or making a data source available through an IM conversation.  Or even imagine new games…  Endless possibilities!

Just posted a few snapshots from a Saturday day hike to Loch Leven Lakes, a wonderful and fairly accessible bit of the High Sierras.  Haven’t been there in a while, despite it being a fantastic place for some bouldering with the kids.  It was good to get above California’s persistent smoky haze for a few hours (though later in the afternoon even the high country took on a smoky hue.)

Wishing everyone a last minute happy 4th of July, and for those of you who missed fireworks this year, here’s a couple of photos to hold you till next year.  Full Flickr set here.

Microsoft TechEd Online has posted a video taped in Orlando after our successful keynote appearance.  This video captures a panel discussion that I participated in - I’ll just quote the blurb:

This Panel discussion centers around the use of standards to facilitate interoperability between different technologies. The participants have all implemented their own version of a reference application and speak about any challenges they faced in implementing the application. The main discussion points of this Panel include: interoperability through SOAP; WS-* standards and how they facilitate interoperability; common problems with interoperability; identity and security in a distributed application; and future directions/remaining challenges in interoperability. With Raghu Thiagarajan, Gerald Beuchelt, Gregory Leake, Jonathan Marsh, and Chris Haddad.

Watch the video here, or go here, search for "Industry Interoperability" and choose your playback format.

Related news:  The video of our demo within the keynote has been extracted from the entire keynote and made available on youtube.  Here’s the link!