A Wicket Diary

Just for the record: this is an early april’s fools joke, expanding on what Francis Amanfo sent to the user list. Thanks for this one Francis!

I’m quite disappointed that Francis Amanfo leaked the IBM internal memo that they will use, promote and support Wicket as their web development platform of choice. I am suprised that he got hands on the memo, and I hope that this will not in any way hinder my negotiations on my planned move to IBM. Now that it is out in the open, I think my NDA no longer holds, and I can speak freely.

Francis writes:

An IBM internal memo, written and signed by product manager, Tim O’Malley, has been leaked. Well, to be more direct, a friend of my working with IBM leaked this to me. In it, IBM praised Wicket as an innovative and state of the art web framework that stands up tall against all its competitors including JSF, Struts 2 and Tapestry.

In the memo, IBM mentions some of it’s frustrations with JSF and
about Sun not listening to them during the creation of the JSF specification. In the memo, IBM also praises the Wicket team as very hardworking and dedicated guys and is in negotiations to employ them into IBM and make them work on Wicket
and sell support under the umbrella of IBM.

The memo also goes further to announce IBM’s plans to integrate Wicket into it’s JEE offerings. To be more specific, Wicket would be Integrated into RAD 8 as the default Web framework, which it plans to release in the fourth quater of this year.
The memo also states IBM’s plans to create widgets, which it plans to market under the label WICKED Widgets, of all the standard Wicket components and enable drag and drop development in RAD 8. It would also make WICKED© widgets standalone for separate downloads.

My contract starts next sunday, so I’ll be packing my stuff into moving boxes. Being able to work on Wicket during office hours will make my life so much easier. Thanks IBM!

Is the MySpace digg.com clone going with the Wicket framework? I know the original founders of Newroo were Wicket users and their business proposal was built using Wicket 1.1. Given that they allegedly sold the company for $7 million to News Corp, that would be the most expensive Wicket application I know.

As MySpace is the worlds biggest website (according to TechCrunch), this would be a nice boost to Wicket’s fame. If only because their first prototype in Wicket gave them enough credibilty to get noticed and acquired.

BTW, they are hiring and want some Wicket talent:

Software Engineer

Fox Interative Media — FIM Labs/Newroo Project

Fox Interactive Media (FIM), a start-up division of NewsCorporation, is seeking a Software Engineer or Senior Software Engineerto work on a series of dynamic and innovative projects.

FIM Labs designs and develops new products for the FIM Network ofwebsites (MySpace, IGN, Scout, etc). The Newroo group’s main focus ison social interaction and communication around user’s personalinterests relating to news. The group is fast moving and highly focused.

Required Skills:
- Java developer experienced with large-scale web development
- Able to pick up new technologies and frameworks quickly
- Experience with POJO frameworks, in particular Hibernate and Spring
- Familiar with social software, blogs and similar technologies
- Works well independently and with a small, intense group
- Internally motivated to help create products with maximum impact

Skills that would be desirable, but not required:
- Familiarity with Wicket web framework
- Experience with web crawler systems
- Math/statistics background
- Knowledge of text processing and parsing
- Familiar with Lucene

If you love that 90’s show with Shannon Dougherty, Jason Priestly and Tori Spelling, and love Wicket development, you may want to apply for this job.