AlephZarro

In Summer 2005 I started few home-made experiments with workflows for governing complex processes - such as system integration on Web layer. I did this as a part of my PhD activities. The main motivation had been my deep disappointment with all the “enterprisy” workflow systems bull**** laying around. I needed something very dynamic, light-weight and portable. I needed a hammer !

I engaged with Mozilla platform and built a workflow engine on top of this unbelievably feature-rich and mature open-source technology. This platform, surprisingly, allowed for much more. So I added libraries for Web navigation, information extraction, rich GUI, etc.

At the end of the day, there it was: a system for development and execution of full-fledged personalized on-top-Web applications. Users could create and share their own scenarios, own personal agents for searching best cars, checking back account, performing complex transactions on portals, or making any mashups crimes. You can learn more about it on the LumberJaczk homepage. From the very beginning the system was meant to be open-source as it really fits the model.

In mids 2006 a wave of strong interest arouse from commercial segments. Unfortunately this interest clashed with the open-source strategy.

May 2007 - The end of the story (or beginning of another one). Lixto Software GmbH acquires the LumberJaczk technologies. Lixto is at the moment one of the market-leaders in the field of Information Extraction and a solution provider for Online Market Intelligence, Web Process Integration and Metasearch. Openly, the current plan of the company is to keep the source closed.

I hope interesting things will happen!

Two weeks ago I announced the new project - the LumberJaczk. There I described it as:

An open-source technology that enables better ways to get and use information on the Web. It let people run and create light-weight on-top-of-Web applications and share them with others. Hacking out your own “best flights search”, “personal investments monitor” will be fun to do.

Since yesterdays late night, the LumberJaczk has its official Web running public at:

Besides the “obligatory” project information the site features few use-cases and screencasts showing the LumberJaczk in action. To keep you informed of what’s going on next subscribe to the project news RSS feed, or join/browse the project mailing list. I’m looking forward to hearing from you guys :)

I’m really looking forward to announce my project I’ve been running since the last summer. And it’s about to happen soon, really soon :). Its mission has crystallized to be:

An open-source technology that enables better ways to get and use information on the Web. Let people create light-weight on-top-of-Web applications of their own and share them with others.

Hacking out such use-cases like “best flights search”, “personal investments monitor” will be fun to create. At least for me it definitely is :) All based on Firefox browser and it’s Mozilla guts. BTW, the project name: LumberJaczk.

So where are we now?
The system has already been functional and ready to use in alpha version for some time. What keeps me busy right now, more than I expected, is preparation of all sorts of presentational stuff to communicate the project to public clearly and concisely. Presentations, screen-casts, docs are ready and the web page is in progress. My estimations are the first come-out of the Web is to happen the next Mon, May 21 at http://lumberjaczk.org. So check back, subscribe or whatever… I’m looking forward to hearing some feedback once it’s out. After that another big thing is to make a code due-diligence so the code release can follow soon.