"Falcon" Begins to Fly, but Needs Your Help

With this edition of The Eagle Eye, I am extremely pleased to make one of the most significant announcements in the history of GSS.

Our new product, Falcon, is ready to take its first "flight".

 

Nearly three years ago in a discussion with Bull and Lori, the three of us identified the need to plan for a complete replacement of our MissionBase product with a new product. This new product would need to use current software technologies, of course, just like we began MissionBase in 1996 with software technology current at that time. This new product would need to be "native" to the internet and web-based technologies. This new product would need to be more user friendly, and offer more capability both in its initial offering and in many updates over time.

None of us knew what shape this new product would take, or what technologies it would use, at the time of that discussion. But during the following months Adobe began releasing a new software product that was eventually named AIR™, for "Adobe Integrated Runtime". The concept of AIR was to be able to take code written for interactive internet applications (sometimes called "Web 2.0") and run that code on the desktop, tapping into the local file system and enabling the power of the PC or Mac to be used with these application. AIR can use a number of underlying programming languages, but the predominant one offered by Adobe is called Flex™. Flex™ is one of the richest programming languages available for providing highly interactive web pages.

After attending a major Adobe conference in August of 2007, we knew that Flex and AIR offered the technology we needed, and woud become the primary tools we would be using for our new software product. In addition, we will continue to use Microsoft SQL Server™ as our database, and Adobe ColdFusion™ to serve the data to the Falcon components written in Flex and running in AIR or on web pages.

Now, 22 short months later, and having learned a great deal more about programming in a very different environment from anything that any of us had done before, we are ready to release our first two components in a preliminary, or "beta" version. In case you aren't aware, "beta" is a software term that roughly translates to "it ain't done yet, but we need your help."

Oh, about that name - "Falcon." It's just a code name. It's sort of where we were in our discussion about a code name when it was dinnertime, and we never got back to the discussion and so it stuck. In a few weeks we will announce a contest where we will ask you to suggest possible real names for this new product. But we figure you need to get to know it a little first, before you suggest a name. So for now, we will refer to it as "Falcon."

Finally, before I point you to the page where you can get started (and we hope you will), I must say thanks to our team. Bull (project manager), Lori (developer), Jacob (developer) and Lyndzie (marketing) have each made contributions to this effort involving countless hours and sleepless nights. They make a great team, and I'm happy to be a part of it.

To find our beta software I will point you to our blog, which has been reworked to support this process. There are four ways to get to this blog.

• You can go straight to http://www.greatspirit.com/blog
• If you are within MissionBase, you can click on the "Falcon Talk" button in the upper right corner.
• From our Website (www.greatspirit.com) you can click on the Falcon Talk logo on the home page.
• If you are already running one of our beta programs, and want to give us feedback, you can click on the "Make Comments" icon on the title bar.

So now I invite you to try one or both Falcon components that are currently available for review. Please let us know about your experience. And watch for more components to become available during the next few months.

Al