Bob's Tumblr

Using Watson Translation service in an Eclipse SWT application Part 2

The next follow-up to the last article is the code I used to communicate with the Watson Translation service. But first I want to show the flow of the data:

So basically the SWT client sends a JSON string to the server in the body of the message. You can do this as long as you specify application/json as the Content-Type. For JSON, I use the JSON library for Java over at json.org and its been…

IBM Commerce Insights will change the way you work online #marketing #merchandising

I just saw a really good info graphic on the IBM Commerce Blog. You can click on the info graphic on the right to see the full version in the blog post.

What is really cool is the video at the end of the article.  I would really love to hear feedback from merchandisers or marketers who think this would really make their jobs easier.

Click image to watch video

              Also, I might as well…

Allowing CORS from a #Node-Red Bluemix application #nodered #bluemix

I wrote a rating application some time ago in Node-Red and have since needed another similar application but with slightly different behavior. So I went ahead and created a new Node-Red application on Bluemix and decided to start from scratch since it was so simple to set up. This application has three requests – Get Rating, Post Rating, and Post Comment. Here is the current flow:

The problem I…

Searching a Cloudant DB search index with #NodeRed

After much searching the internet and seeing multiple posts about this subject I can only think that many others are greatly confused with the use of the Cloudant In node in Node-Red. I think my problem was terminology and not being familiar enough with the Cloudant nomenclature more than anything and the user interface in Node needs a little more work.

I basically want to return all documents…

Brilliant idea at Shop.org!

For sessions, they passed out USB chargers that you return when the session is over. Brilliant!

IBM WebSphere Commerce v8 is here at last!

In case you missed the announcement, IBM just released WebSphere Commerce v8!

There are going to be a lot of posts over the next month on the many new features in this release. I am most excited for two particularly interesting features, the first one is the new customer service representative features (CSR):

WebSphere Commerce V8.0 provides new customer service enhancements with Customer…

2015 Lunar Eclipse with a blood moon pictures

Last night my son Nathan and I used the telescope and an iPhone 6 to take pictures of the eclipse and then the following blood moon. They came out pretty good but my brother Tom (who owns Balfe’s photography) took even better ones! Check out the pictures below:

Need video for your eCommerce shopping experience? Then you should join this webinar by Invodo

One of our Ready for IBM Commerce partners, Invodo, is hosting a Webinar on September 29th at 1pm EDT (10am PDT, 6pm BST):

Title: Visual Commerce: A Call-To-Action From Online Shoppers​ Abstract: Visual content – like video, images, and spin photography – is becoming more relevant than ever in the online buying process. In this webinar, we’ll take an in-depth look at visual content and explore the…

The building was massive, I honestly could not believe how many vendors and sessions were there. There were even camp fires!

  At the IBM booth we had a mini-theater area where our business partners, CPP Studios, designed a custom shoe interface on top of WebSphere Commerce. Customers could walk up, design/paint their shoe, have it published to a WebSphere Commerce online store for sale and then print a picture of their design.

You can watch the full video of me creating this shoe here:

http://blog.balfes.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/IMG_0068.m4v

Adobe, Coremedia, and WebSphere Commerce #cms #marketing

Ever since Adobe and IBM announced their partnership, many have been asking “well which CMS should I pick?”. I am not going to cover Portal or WebSphere Content Management in this post, I am just going to stick with the partner solutions Adobe and Coremedia, so that will have to be for another day.

Now of course this is just my opinion and others may have a different opinion but this is in the…

Will the "Buy It" button be the dominant shopping e-channel in the future? #marketing #ecommerce

I have posted about Actv8.me in the past and now with the introduction of Pinterest’s “Buy It” button we are seeing a huge movement into the this new digital shopping experience. Shoppers now have the ability to use different kinds of applications like Pinterest and Houzz to see products in a different way and then actually buy them.

Let’s look at these three different models and compare:

Actv8.me

Did you know about the #Adobe Experience Manager to #IBM WebSphere Commerce Connector?

    Did you know about this cool new connector for Adobe Experience Manager and IBM WebSphere Commerce? Click the picture below to see more.

Finding every possible combination of array entries from multiple lists with unknown bounds in Java

I am sure this post will resonate with pretty much any developer that reads it. Have you ever had a problem where you had to really step back and think about for a long time? A problem where the wealth of the internet helps a little but just isn’t what you were looking for? One big problem is I had recursion on my brain and I was convinced for a long time recursion would be needed. Seeing many…