Programming

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  Google Code Blog

• Introducing Closure Tools

  Mike Marchak

  5 Nov 2009 | 10:30 am

  Millions of Google users worldwide use JavaScript-intensive applications such as Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Maps. Like developers everywhere, Googlers want great web apps to be easier to create, so we've built many tools to help us develop these (and many other) apps. We're happy to announce the open sourcing of these tools, and proud to make them available to the web development community.Closure CompilerClosure Compiler is a JavaScript optimizer that compiles web apps down into compact, high-performance JavaScript code. The compiler removes dead code, then rewrites and minimizes what's…

• New personalization features in Google Friend Connect

  Mike Marchak

  4 Nov 2009 | 8:50 am

  Today, we're excited to announce several new features for Google Friend Connect that make it possible for website owners to get to know their users, encourage users to get to know each other, and match their site content (including Google ads) to visitors' interests. Check out the Google Social Web Blog for an overview of these new features.We also want to point out that there are APIs for developers who want to play with the interests data programmatically. With the new interest data described on the Social Web Blog, developers can write custom polls and access the interests data…

• OAuth Enhancements

  Mike Marchak

  3 Nov 2009 | 9:05 am

  Google has recently added three important enhancements to our OAuth support:The ability to use OAuth without registrationSupport for software apps installed on a computer or mobile phoneAdditional controls for our Google Apps Premier and Education customers which allows administrators to give another web application access to a subset of the data Google stores for that organizationBelow is an overview of each enhancement, or you can refer to our updated OAuth documentation.1. The ability to use OAuth without registrationBased on consistent feedback from our developers, we added the…

• Hybrid Onboarding

  Mike Marchak

  3 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

  Do you operate a website and wish you could increase the percentage of users who finish the registration process? As discussed on Google's main blog, Google has been working with Plaxo and Facebook to improve the registration success rate for Gmail users. We now see success rates as high as 90%, compared to the 50-60% rate that most websites see with traditional registration mechanisms. This result was achieved using a combination of our OpenID, OAuth and Portable Contacts APIs. While those APIs have been available for over a year, we have added a number of refinements based on our experience…

• Google Analytics API on App Engine Treemap Visualization

  Neel Kshetramade

  30 Oct 2009 | 11:30 am

  It's Friday, time for some fun!Here is a captivating way to visualize your Google Analytics data in a Treemap visualization and you can visualize your own data with our live demo.(note: IE currently not supported for visualization part)The goal of this example was to teach people how to use the Google Analytics API on App Engine in Java. As well as demonstrating how to use both OAuth and AuthSub along with the App Engine's various services. The code looked great, but the output was a boring HTML table. So I used some open source tools to transform the table into a pretty tree map…

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  Dzone

• Send Email Using Gmail in C#

  dotCore

  6 Nov 2009 | 10:31 pm

  In this tutorial I will be showing you how you would go about Sending Email Using Gmail in C#.

• I *heart* LINQ

  AshwinJay

  6 Nov 2009 | 10:31 pm

  .Net 4 is looking more and more attractive. I absolutely loved and at the same time was jealous of the LINQ feature in .Net. Now with PLINQ (Parallel LINQ) it just become so attractive that it's almost illegal. At least that's how I see it compared to the language features in Java, which hasn't changed since 1.5.

• Testing and constructors

  piccoloprincipe

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:15 pm

  One of the pillars of design for testability, which is listed also in the Google guide for code reviewers, is to have constructors that do not contain logic or method calls. I will explain the reasons behind this choice with an example, but let me say that to reduce dependencies it is natural for a class to avoid making assumptions on the external environment, performing things like creating new objects. Separating the business responsibility of a class from the one of wiring itself to other objects is necessary.

• Essential CSS/HTML Lists Styling Techniques

  mswatcher

  6 Nov 2009 | 8:01 pm

  Certain elements in HTML lend themselves to many situations when marking up a website, one of the more useful of these elements is the HTML list. Using lists, a developer can markup horizontal navigation, dropdown navigation, a list of links, and even scrolling content panels (with the help of Javascript). These features can help developers build new sites and applications as well as integrate new content into existing applications.

• Mobile Market Going Open Source?

  john smith9942

  6 Nov 2009 | 6:38 pm

  At this year's GSMA Mobile World Congress, 3 ½ hours were devoted to the topic of "Mobilizing Open Source", which was no doubt spurred in part by the increasing attention Google's open-source mobile operating system, Android, has drawn. While open-source products have, for the most part, been pushed into a corner and untouched in the enterprise due to lack of support, regular updates, and compatibility, the mobile market is a unique bird.

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  Ajaxian » Front Page

• Mockingbird: Cappuccino-based visual mockup tool

  Dion Almaer

  6 Nov 2009 | 3:19 am

  Mockingbird is a nice Cappuccino based tool that lets you quickly mockup a wire-frame on the Web. Fire it up, build out your “pages”, drag and drop your UI, and then share it with your clients!

• Clipperz and Zero-Knowledge Online Password Management

  Michael Mahemoff

  5 Nov 2009 | 3:17 pm

  The latest in Jon Udell’s excellent podcast series is an interview with clipperz.com’s Marco Barulli about the tool and its use of zero-knowledge online password management (aka the host-proof hosting pattern). Direct MP3 link (from IT Conversations post) Jon speaks of translucent databases, which encrypt data that can only make sense at application level. Thanks to the dramatic increases we’ve seen in the performance of Javascript engines, that kind of encryption technology is now feasible in the browser. Marco also makes the point that Javascript implementations of raw…

• Google releases Closure, the tools behind the JS geniuses

  Dion Almaer

  5 Nov 2009 | 12:08 pm

  I remember when the whole Ajax thing kicked in and JavaScript developers looked at Gmail, Gmaps, and the like and thought “I wonder what powers that?” Well, the power comes from Closure a library and set of tools that the great JS hackers built over time as they created the applications at scale. As soon as I joined Google I wanted to check out this code, and talked to a bunch of folks who were interested in open sourcing it. Well, these things take time, but now we are fortunate enough to have everything out there (interestingly, a lot of the code was open due to it being used in…

• Riot.js: JavaScript port of the lean fast unit test framework

  Dion Almaer

  5 Nov 2009 | 3:12 am

  Riot started as a lean Ruby unit test framework with tests that have a style like this: PLAIN TEXT RUBY: context "a new user" do   setup { User.new }   asserts("that it is not yet created") { topic.new_record? } end Alex Young has now implemented Riot.js which brings you the lean framework in a format that can run stand-along via Rhino, or through the browser itself with tests that look like: PLAIN TEXT JAVASCRIPT:   Riot.run(function() {   context('basic riot functionality', function() {     given('some…

• MooTools Call to Upgrade

  Rey Bango

  4 Nov 2009 | 12:51 pm

  A change in Firefox 3.6 has prompted a call to upgrade from the MooTools team. Earlier versions of the library used the document.getBoxObjectFor method for browser detection but as of Firefox 3.6, that method has been deprecated and no longer available: The reason we stress the upgrade to MooTools 1.2.4 and MooTools 1.1.2 is the removal of the document.getBoxObjectFor method in the upcoming Mozilla Firefox 3.6 release. Within the browser detection code of MooTools 1.1 and earlier versions of 1.2, MooTools attempts to identify the Gecko engine by checking for the existence of…

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  PHP.net releases

• PHP 5.3.0 released!

  Webmaster

  31 Dec 1969 | 4:00 pm

  There is a new PHP release in town!

• 
  PHP.net news & announcements

• PHP UK Conference 2010 Call For Papers

  Webmaster

  30 Oct 2009 | 6:19 am

  The main focus of the PHP UK conference is obviously the talks that are given, and so we hope to attract the best PHP speakers from around the world. We are looking for talks relating to any non-basic aspect of the PHP programming language, be it mainstream, advanced, niche or non-technical. Speakers will be invited to the pre-conference dinner, likely to be on Thursday February 25th 2010 and the post-conference social dinner after the event. The deadline for this call for papers is the end of Saturday 31st October 2009.

• International PHP Conference

  Webmaster

  21 Oct 2009 | 11:15 am

  With its mixture of topics the International PHP Conference provides an ideal resource for all professionals and their successful daily routine within the whole PHP spectrum. Insights into current Web 2.0 technologies, Security, Best Practices for tools and components, Enterprise know-how, databases, architectures and more are presented at the International PHP Conference 2009. More than 30 Experts explain current trends and demonstrate how to make the most of your code and your business. They will answer your questions not only in the 40+ sessions and panel discussions but also during…

• PHP World Kongress

  Webmaster

  1 Oct 2009 | 12:19 pm

  On 24th and 25th of November you should not miss the lectures of the top speakers of the PHP Industry on Professional Software Development with PHP at Munich Conference Center. 10 international speakers offer you more than 20 hours of knowledge transfer in the topics "Development", "Tools & Technologies", "PHP 5 Certification", "TYPO3 Certification", "Search Engine Optimization" and "Design Patterns with PHP" on two days. On November 24th, Pierre Joye from the PHP core team under Windows opens the congress with his keynote…

• Call for speaker ConFoo 2010

  Webmaster

  29 Sep 2009 | 10:20 am

  PHP Quebec, Montreal-Python, Ruby Montreal, W3Qc, and OWASP Montreal are organizing the first edition of the ConFoo.ca conference for Web technologies, which will be held in Montreal on March 10th through 12th, at the prestigious Hilton Bonaventure Hotel. We are looking for the best international speakers willing to share their experience and skills with programmers, managers and marketers. The conference is divided into two parts: A technical part, encompassing different aspects of Web development: PHP, Python, Ruby, security, CMSs and frameworks, databases, systems administration, Web…

• PHP Barcelona Conference 2009

  Webmaster

  28 Sep 2009 | 12:27 pm

  The PHP Barcelona User Group is proud to announce that the PHP Barcelona Conference 2009 is here, and it is arriving bigger than ever! Two days, three parallel tracks of talks and workshops, and some of the biggest names and companies in the industry covering the hottest subjects to date. Come to Barcelona (Citilab) to see Rasmus Lerdorf, Fabien Potencier, Derick Rethans, Sebastian Bergmann and many more open the hood and expose the secrets of PHP and PHP related technologies that make the Internet what it is today, and that power what the Internet will be tomorrow. Discover the newest…

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  SOTC Recent Posts

• SOTC Episode 5 - What Does Marsellus Wallace Look Like?

  The Reddest

  1 Nov 2009 | 3:40 pm

  After a few-month hiatus, the team is back for another installment of Switch On The Code. In this episode Charlie Key and Brandon Cannaday discuss college senior CS projects, Visual Studio 2010 beta 2, Twitter Lists, Adobe CS5, Google Wave, Windows 7, Lua, and iPhone development tools. Audio Downloads:  SOTC Episode 5 - What Does Marsellus Wallace Look Like.mp3

• Using Shark to Performance Tune Your iPhone App

  The Reddest

  30 Oct 2009 | 6:38 am

  Here was the problem: we were working on an OpenGL iPhone game and for some reason the frame rates were unusually low - especially for what little action was happening on the screen at the time. My first plan of attack was to begin commenting out chunks of the system in an attempt to see what module was causing the problem. I removed the physics, the logic updates, and some of the things being rendered. Nothing I did, however, seemed to create a noticeable improvement in performance.

• C++ & Lua - Function Arguments

  The Hairiest

  21 Oct 2009 | 12:37 pm

  As we have been realizing here at SOTC, using Lua with C++ is really the only way to make Lua work for you. Lua itself is really not that useful, but used in conjunction with other languages, it can be quite powerful. It past tutorials, we have gone over how to use Lua with C++. However, we have yet to go over how to pass arguments back and forth between the two. This is what we will cover today.

• C++ & Lua - Functions

  The Hairiest

  16 Oct 2009 | 3:27 pm

  So in our last Lua tutorial, we went over a basic way to get information from lua and use it inside C++ code. This time, we are going to use the same principals to run a lua function from C++ and a C++ function from lua. This opens up endless possibilities for communication between the two. So, how about we get started then.

• Finding Memory Leaks in iPhone Code

  The Fattest

  9 Oct 2009 | 10:30 am

  The video tutorial below shows how to use the performance tools that come with the Apple development kit to find memory leaks in Cocoa and Cocoa Touch code.

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  MSDN: U.S. Local Highlights

• Microsoft Silverlight: Light Up the Web

  6 Nov 2009 | 12:10 pm

  Discover the latest releases of Microsoft Silverlight and Expression 3 during these on-demand videos and audio podcasts. Learn from industry experts as they explain how to use Sketchflow, apply XAML power toys, and create rich Internet applications (RIA).

• Develop Windows 7 Applications

  6 Nov 2009 | 12:10 pm

  Learn how to take advantage of new features to make your applications built with Visual Studio light up on Windows 7.

• Getting Started with Silverlight Development

  2 Nov 2009 | 7:40 pm

  This video explains the concepts and tools needed to get started with Silverlight development from a developer's perspective.

• Visit the MSDN Windows Client Software Development Forums

  2 Nov 2009 | 7:40 pm

  For community advice, tips, and best practices, participate in the Software Development for Windows Client forums.

• New! Download the SDL Developer Starter Kit

  29 Oct 2009 | 6:25 pm

  Educate yourself and your organization on how to build more secure applications. The SDL Developer Starter Kit offers content, labs, and training to help you establish a standardized approach to rolling out the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) in your organization.

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  37signals Product Blog

• Bungalow lets you manage your Highrise task list on your iPhone

  37signals

  6 Nov 2009 | 7:27 am

  Do you use Highrise to handle your task list? Do you have an iPhone? Then Bungalow may be for you... Bungalow brings your Highrise task list to your iPhone so you can manage them on the go. Even if you are not connected to the internet you can tick tasks off, edit them and create new tasks with seamless background syncing when you're back online. In future releases of Bungalow we'll be extending it to handle other parts of your Highrise information. Get it now while the price is low and you'll get all the updates for free!

• Prefinery manages software betas and integrates with Highrise

  37signals

  5 Nov 2009 | 9:18 am

  Prefinery manages betas (for webapps and desktop software) — and it integrates with Highrise. It allows customers to create a splash page, supports a sign-up form with fields and survey questions, and handles incrementally inviting users. Customers can sync their list of testers (early adopters, best customers) with Highrise via the API to track leads, conversations, etc for further down the road. Prefinery also integrates with MailChimp.

• Haystack helps web designers and clients find each other

  37signals

  4 Nov 2009 | 12:09 pm

  Lots of Haystack success stories are pouring in. And Download Squad just wrote about how Haystack helps web designers and clients find each other: Early reports seem to be positive, with designers reporting they are signing new clients in short order. So if you're looking to advertise your design abilities, or if you're looking for a designer, give Haystack a look. Learn more about Haystack.

• Campfire tip: Type a persons full name with just a few characters

  37signals

  3 Nov 2009 | 8:27 am

  What do you do when there are lots of people in a Campfire chat room and you want to direct a question or answer to a specific person? Simply start your message with the “@” sign and the first few characters of that person’s name until a yellow box displays showing that person’s full name. Send your message and that person’s full name will display in front of your statement in the chat room. Note: This may not work if you are using a 3rd party application to access Campfire chat.

• WiseClicker reviews "easy to use" Basecamp

  37signals

  2 Nov 2009 | 7:50 am

  WiseClicker, a resource for small businesses and entrepreneurs, offers up this review of Basecamp. As a reflection of 37Signals’ philosophy for product development, Basecamp offers functionality that is easy to use, avoids bells and whistles and focuses on communication and collaboration. It is more for users that prefer getting things done practically and don’t really care about the formal charting and reporting side of project management. Read the full review.

• 
  Signal vs. Noise

• VIDEO: Ken Burn’s documentary on Frank Lloyd Wright s

  Matt

  6 Nov 2009 | 8:10 am

  Ken Burn’s documentary on Frank Lloyd Wright shows Wright did the actual drawings for the famous Falling Water house in less than three hours! [via TSY] Related:Picasso, Paula Scher, and the lifetime behind every second [SvN]

• INSIGHT: Designs take a leap forward when you kill

  Ryan

  5 Nov 2009 | 12:20 pm

  Designs take a leap forward when you kill the things you didn’t know you were holding on to.

• Haystack: Two Week Anniversary + Latest Updates

  Jason F.

  5 Nov 2009 | 10:43 am

  Haystack is off to a great start. We launched two weeks ago on October 21st, and so far over over 2,500 web designers have been listed. Lots are finding clients as well. That’s exciting. We’ve been hard at work improving Haystack. Here are some of the improvements we’ve made since launch: Call to action footer At the bottom of each company page, we’ve added a call to action after their portfolio shots. This way it’s easier to scroll through someone’s work and then get in touch with them. It says “Like what you see? Contact via email or web.”…

• New Car Camo

  Jason F.

  5 Nov 2009 | 7:01 am

  Car companies go to great lengths to hide new models from from the public (or car paparazzi) during road testing. They’ve gotta drive the cars, but they don’t want to give away their designs too early. Car camouflage used to be handled with wraps, fake bodies, or fake pieces attached to the actual body. Like: But lately I’ve noticed more companies using swirly decals or geometric stickers to mask the shape. Check these out: I would assume once cars get deeper into the testing phase, and aerodynamics, wind noise, and overall ride quality need to be fined tuned, the bulky camp…

• VIDEO: Jay Shafer of Tumbleweed Tiny House Company

  37signals

  4 Nov 2009 | 4:06 pm

  Jay Shafer of Tumbleweed Tiny House Company designs and builds small houses ranging from 65 to 837 square feet. He’s spent the last 10 years living in his tiny houses. In this video he gives a tour of a 96 square foot house.

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  MapQuest Developer Blog

• New MapQuest Map Style Added to JS and AS3 SDKs in Beta

  Antony Pegg

  29 Oct 2009 | 8:00 am

  You may have noticed that MapQuest.com has a new style to its maps today. We're celebrating this launch on the SDK team by pushing an extra special update to the JavaScript and ActionScript 6.0 SDKs in Beta to enable the new map style.While we're at it, we also added a few other things to the JavaScript SDK. Namely: A new Overview Map control you can add to the main map A documentation overhaul for presentation New Documentation sections, including how to do your own custom POIs Check the Developer Network Beta section for the latest AS3 Packages (AS3 Release 3) and for JavaScript include…

• Draggable Routes for Actionscript now in Beta

  Antony Pegg

  26 Oct 2009 | 11:00 pm

  Not to be outdone by the latest beta releases from the Services Team the SDK team have a brand new Directions module for the Actionscript/Flex SDK that uses the new Directions Service already in production. ActionScript SDK Updates Available on the Developer Network Beta page. Completely new Directions module There is a new Directions.swc which replaces all the routing functionality previously found in the AdvantageApi.swc - this is a complete overhaul and upgrade to the object model and how you use it - it is now MUCH MUCH simpler and saner - and smaller! Simplified Routing Function Create a…

• Batch Geocoding and Static Map Custom Icons in Beta

  Antony Pegg

  19 Oct 2009 | 5:00 am

  Hot on the heels of last week's releases we have another two Beta updates. Geocoding Web Service Updates Available at http://platform.beta.mapquest.com/geocoding. Overhauled Documentation First thing you'll notice is overhauled documentation and better examples for the previously available functions of geocode and reverse geocode. It should now match the style of the other services. Batch Geocoding We've added a new function that lets you geocode up to 100 addresses at once. Each address has its own ambiguity list returned in the results. Map Biasing If you provide a Map Bounds with your…

• MapQuest Directions Web Service and Long URL Web Service Released

  Josh Babetski

  12 Oct 2009 | 4:20 am

  Along with today's relaunch of the MapQuest Developer Network, we're also launching two new products to go with it. Directions Web Service First is our new Directions Web Service, which frees you of having to use a language-specific SDK for directions data and provides maximum flexibility in how you integrate those directions into your application. Features include: Basic and Advanced Routing Route Matrix Draggable Routes Long URL Web Service One of the issues with Internet Explorer is that it has a 2048 character limit for URLs. This is problematic for long GET requests, since the URL could…

• MapQuest Developer Network Relaunched!

  Josh Babetski

  12 Oct 2009 | 4:00 am

  DevNet Next MapQuest is happy to announce the launch of a completely rebuilt and revised MapQuest Developer Network. Our goal is to make it easy for the growing development community to get started with the MapQuest Platform and for experienced developers to find what info they need fast. What's New Documentation Made Easy Our new Web Services and upcoming 6.0 SDKs will have a simpler and concise set of documentation so you can view instructions, variables, samples, and source code all at-a-glance. Consolidated Application Management Your applications are now attached to MapQuest My Places.

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  A List Apart

• Can You Say That in English? Explaining UX Research to Clients

  3 Nov 2009 | 1:00 am

  It's hard for clients to understand the true value of user experience research. As much as you'd like to tell your clients to go read The Elements of User Experience and call you back when they’re done, that won’t cut it in a professional services environment. David Sherwin creates a cheat sheet to help you pitch UX research using plain, client-friendly language that focuses on the business value of each exercise.

• You Can Get There From Here: Websites for Learners

  3 Nov 2009 | 1:00 am

  "Content-rich" is not enough. Most websites are not learner-friendly. As an industry, we haven’t done our best to make our content-rich websites suitable for learning and exploration. Learners require more from us than keywords and killer headlines. They need an environment that is narrative, interactive, and discoverable. Amber Simmons tells how to begin creating rich content sites that invite and repay exploration and discovery.

• Getting to No

  20 Oct 2009 | 3:00 am

  A bad client relationship is like a bad marriage without the benefits. To avoid such relationships, or to fix the one you’re in, learn the five classic signs of trouble. Recognizing the never-ending contract revisionist, the giant project team, the vanishing boss and other warning signs can help you run successful, angst-free projects.

• The Myth of Usability Testing

  20 Oct 2009 | 3:00 am

  Usability evaluations are good for many things, but determining a team’s priorities is not one of them. The Molich experiment proves a single usability team can’t discover all or even most major problems on a site. But usability testing does have value as a shock treatment, trust builder, and part of a triangulation process. Test for the right reasons and achieve a positive outcome.

• Discovering Magic

  6 Oct 2009 | 3:00 am

  Wouldn’t it be a little magical if, when you signed up for a new site, it said something like, “We notice you have a profile photo on Flickr and Twitter, would you like to use one of those or upload a new one?” Glenn Jones created a JavaScript library called Ident Engine that can help you do just that.

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  CFlex Aggregation of Macromedia Flex in the News

• RIATest Version 3 Now Available

  5 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm

  What's New in RIATest 3 RIATest 3 major new features General Mac OS X version now available. Flex 4 Spark components preliminary support. Test results converter utility rtxml2html. IDE Code Completion. Background Syntax Check. Test results visualization reports. Recording options (automationName/id, minimal/verbose). Developer productivity mode (always accept connections). RIAScript Language try/catch/finally statements. Customizable error handling via setErrorMode function. FileStream object (low-level file operations). CSVStream object (CSV file reading and writting). Ability to call…

• Adobe eSeminar: PDF Portfolios for Flex & ActionScript Developers

  5 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm

  Join the Adobe Acrobat User Community on Wed. November 18, 2009 for a free eSeminar on how to create highly branded, custom PDF Portfolio layouts using Acrobat 9's ActionScript API and Flex. PDF Portfolios let you combine Flash/Flex/ActionScript with PDF to redefine what a document can be. If you are a Flex developer and are interested in leveraging your skills in a new and exciting way, this eSeminar is for you. Overview Free 60-min Acrobat 9 PDF Portfolios for Developers eSeminar with live Q&A Date Wednesday, November 18, 2009 Time 10-11am US Pacific (1-2pm US Eastern) Free Registration…

• Abode Flash Builder announced for Force.com

  25 Oct 2009 | 5:00 pm

  In order to supposedly give the developers ?the best of both worlds? via the notable Salesforce. com and Adobe Systems? pairing, the companies Monday announced Abode Flash Builder for Force. com, an integrated development environment (IDE) that facilitates the development of rich Internet applications (RIAs) deployable via browsers and on desktops. <P> Along with providing 100 reusable user interface components, charting and animation capabilities, the Eclipse-based IDE also boasts integration with Adobe?s LiveCycle Data Services, whereby developers will be able to sync Force. com data…

• SlideRocket Tailors Presentation App for Sales, Marketing Teams

  28 Sep 2009 | 5:00 pm

  sliderocket, which makes a Web presentation platform using Adobe's Flex software development kit, is looking to attract more sales and marketing teams to ...

• Flash app development extended to HTML users

  15 Sep 2009 | 5:00 pm

  FluidHTML serves as an alternative to Adobe's Flex language but unlike Flex, FluidHTML applications are not compiled. Instead, a real-time interpreter is ...

• 
  Google Testing Blog

• The FedEx Tour

  James Whittaker

  20 Oct 2009 | 3:48 pm

  By Rajat DewanI appreciate James' offer to talk about how I have used the FedEx tour in Mobile Ads. Good timing too as I just found two more priority 0 bugs with the automation that the FedEx tour inspired! It was fun presenting this at STAR and I am pleased so many people attended.Mobile has been a hard problem space for testing: a humongous browser, phone, capability combination which is changing fast as the underlying technology evolves. Add to this poor tool support for the mobile platform and the rapid evolution of the device and you'll understand why I am so interested in advice on how…

• STAR West Trip Report

  James Whittaker

  12 Oct 2009 | 1:08 pm

  By James A. WhittakerI am happy to report that attendance is way up at STAR. My back of the envelope calculations put it at several hundred more than STAR East a mere five months ago. A sure sign of economic recovery; I am surprised the stat hasn't made it to Obama's resume yet.The Expo was my main disappointment. The vendor exhibits are still in atrophy. I realize the days of Mercury and Rational are over and Empirix's $ix figure rotating-parts booth is packed away in someone's garage, but there were only two short rows of sedate booths. (The magician was a nice touch though ... wish I could…

• TotT: Making a Perfect Matcher

  Christopher Semturs

  5 Oct 2009 | 1:45 am

  by Zhanyong G. Mock Wan in Google KirklandIn the previous episode, we showed how Google C++ Mocking Framework matchers can make both your test code and your test output readable. What if you cannot find the right matcher for the task?Don't settle for anything less than perfect. It's easy to create a matcher that does exactly what you want, either by composing from existing matchers or by writing one from scratch.The simplest composite matcher is Not(m), which negates matcher m as you may have guessed. We also have AnyOf(m1, ..., mn) for OR-ing and AllOf(m1, ..., mn) for AND-ing. Combining…

• Cost of Testing

  Misko

  2 Oct 2009 | 9:07 am

  By Miško HeveryA lot of people have been asking me lately, what is the cost of testing, so I decided, that I will try to measure it, to dispel the myth that testing takes twice as long.For the last two weeks I have been keeping track of the amount of time I spent writing tests versus the time writing production code. The number surprised even me, but after I thought about it, it makes a lot of sense. The magic number is about 10% of time spent on writing tests. Now before, you think I am nuts, let me back it up with some real numbers from a personal project I have been working…

• TotT: Literate Testing With Matchers

  Christopher Semturs

  29 Sep 2009 | 10:57 am

  By Zhanyong G. Mock Wan in Google KirklandAlright, it sounds like a good idea to verify that matchmakers can read and write. How does this concern us programmers, though?Actually, we are talking about a way of writing tests here – a way that makes both the test code and its output read like English (hence “literate”). The key to this technique is matchers, which are predicates that know how to describe themselves. For example, in Google C++ Mocking Framework, ContainsRegex("Ahcho+!") is a matcher that matches any string that has the regular expression "Ahcho+!" in it. Therefore, it…

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  Ted On Flash

• Learning Fx4 from Scratch - Update 2

  Ted Patrick

  27 Oct 2009 | 9:03 am

  Yesterday I completed 4 new pages with 10 Flex 4 samples in Learn Flex 4 from Scratch. Now is really the time to start learning Flex 4 given the stability of Flex 4 Beta 2 and the volume of great session content available post Adobe MAX.Here are the new sections in Learn Flex 4 from Scratch:Element CreationaddElement, addElementAt, removeElement, removeElementAtElement PropertiesStatesHave I told you that I really love States! They are my favorite feature in Flex 4 (thus far) and really make building applications much easier. The syntax change for States really makes them easy to read and use…

• Learning Fx4 from Scratch - Part 1 - Application

  Ted Patrick

  20 Oct 2009 | 5:45 am

  Welcome to "Learning Fx4 from Scratch", this weekly series of blog posts will attempt to cover Fx4 beginning to end from a developer perspective.Learning Fx4 from Scratch has MOVED!Learning Fx4 from Scratch has MOVED!Learning Fx4 from Scratch has MOVED!Learning Fx4 from Scratch has MOVED! Cheers!ted ;)

• SOURCE to 4 Flash iPhone Apps

  Ted Patrick

  5 Oct 2009 | 2:10 pm

  Here is the source for 4 iPhone demo applications I made during the internal development of "Notus", aka iPhone export. The projects are ASProject out of Flex Builder. The first thing you will notice is that there is nothing special here, just simple AS3 apps the are cross-compiled to IPA ( iPhone ARM Binaries ). From these projects you can get started today building apps.Circles - A simple 2.5D app Circles GLES - Same app hardware accelerated using GLES FlashWrap - Bubble wrap with random sounds! (In the Adobe Booth!) FingerPaint - A simple drawing app (In the Adobe Booth!)Special thanks…

• ADOBE MAX 2009: SESSIONS NOT TO MISS

  Ted Patrick

  23 Sep 2009 | 9:39 am

  I put this list together of sessions that I would not miss at Adobe MAX. There are so many great sessions to choose from but this is my biased list:Flash Player Internals by Lee ThomasonTour the inner workings of Flash Player through the eyes of one of its architects and see what happens after you've written your code. You'll learn about the rendering model, text engine, new acceleration features, and how Flash Player has evolved for mobile. By knowing what is really going on with Flash Player, you'll leave with a better intuitive sense of how to build and optimize your applications.Thoughts:…

• Learning Flex 4 ... from scratch!

  Ted Patrick

  21 Sep 2009 | 11:20 am

  Given I was away from Flex for a year working on Community programs, I have found myself needing to learn Flex 4 from scratch! ( I know it is hard to believe but I need to learn Flex 4 too! ). Last week and weekend I took my first steps into Flex 4 and although it is similar to Flex 2 & 3 there is a ton of new things to learn. The new Spark framework, new components, layout behavior, graphics tags, styling, and states syntax can be overwhelming but they add a ton of great features to Flex. Where to start?Instead of learning Flex 4 privately I am planning to post the things I learn and…

• 
  Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen

• Oredev 2009 - LIVE (now recorded) Closing Panel Video

  Scott Hanselman

  6 Nov 2009 | 4:46 pm

  I was at Øredev 2009 in Malmö, Sweden this week. Øredev is fast becoming one of the premier conferences in Europe focused on the software development process. It's a consciously technology agnostic conference so there was not only a .NET tracks and a Java track, but also tracks like Agile Ways, User Experience and Cloud Computing. I believe there were something like 100 speakers so it was an incredibly diverse conference. I hung out with some friends from Sun, an iPhone hacker from AT&T, ASP.NET Debugger Tess Ferrandez, Trygve Reenskaug the inventor of the MVC Model, as well as old…

• Hanselminutes on 9 - Debugging Crash Dumps with Tess Ferrandez and VS2010

  Scott Hanselman

  5 Nov 2009 | 8:11 am

  I'm in Sweden this week at Øredev and I got a chance to talk to legendary ASP.NET Debugger and Escalation Engineer Tess Ferrandez. In this video Tess shows me how to debug a dump of an ASP.NET Web Site with a pile of awesome and totally new features in Visual Studio 2010. You can open up dump files in Visual Studio directly and see visual representations of parallel call stacks. If you spend any time in WinDBG you're going to be excited by these new improvements in the debugging experience. I also talked to Tess for an extended Debugging 101 session on the full 30 minute audio edition of my…

• Offline installer for Windows Live Essentials - WLSetup-All.exe

  Scott Hanselman

  31 Oct 2009 | 11:52 pm

  My brother and his wife came over today and the kids went trick or treating. His wife mentioned she wanted to make a quick DVD of the pictures and movies we took, so I suggested Movie Maker. However, they only have dial-up and wanted an offline installer I could just put on a USB Stick (I actually figured I'd put it on their camera's SD Card.) I went to http://download.live.com and searched all over, looking for an offline installer. I Googled with Bing, and then Googled with Google for things like "Windows Live Offline Installer" and found nothing but confusion. Then I figured out…

• Using a Bluetooth Jawbone Headset for BT-Audio (Microphone or Speakers) on Windows 7

  Scott Hanselman

  31 Oct 2009 | 12:17 am

  I installed a PILE of new drivers tonight from Lenovo using their most awesome System Update 4.0. Included was a Bluetooth Stack update. On a whim, I tried to pair my Jawbone Bluetooth Headset, something that has never worked before, and it worked! More interestingly, when I right click on the Jawbone and click "Control" I get this dialog I've never seen before! This actually looks and feels a tiny bit unpolished. Note the tight vertical whitespace at the VERY top and the strange blue gradient, as well as the Vista-esque color scheme on the far left. Not sure if this was in Vista…

• Windows 7 with BitLocker and Still Booting To VHD

  Scott Hanselman

  30 Oct 2009 | 10:34 pm

  As a remote worker at Microsoft I have to deal with a few little things that the average worker in Redmond doesn't. For example, none of my machines are wired to "CorpNet." They're all remote so for the last two years I've had to RAS (Remote Access Service) into the corporate network. For a while you could use your password, but then you needed to use your Smart Card (or your immortal soul, as I call it) and a complex pin. So you've got multi-factor authentication, you need your actual network password (and of could your domain\username), your physical smart card and your smart…

• 
  The Register

• Mozilla aborted IE in Firefox clothing

  6 Nov 2009 | 11:18 pm

  Google we're not At one point, Mozilla considered building a plug-in that would turn Microsoft's Internet Explorer into a decent browser. But unlike Google, it quickly abandoned the idea.…Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn't work

• El Reg shrinks seven days into webpage

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:22 pm

  Attention span not required Week in Review As a service to our with readers with (particularly) short attention spans, we at The Reg have squeezed the week that was into a single webpage. Or at least most of it. Before your attention drifts elsewhere, we should get to it:…Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn't work

• Vint Cerf: 'Google doesn't know who you are'

  6 Nov 2009 | 4:17 pm

  Identifiers don't identify Interwebs founding father and Google evangelist Vint Cerf has insisted that when you search Google, the company doesn't know who you are.…Offloading malware protection to the cloud

• Animal lovers say no to radioactive NASA monkeys

  6 Nov 2009 | 4:07 pm

  Appeal irradiated monkeyshines Animal rights groups are apparently not pleased with NASA's plan to zap squirrel monkeys with repeated doses of radiation for science.…Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn't work

• Sun's surviving staff hit with 'motivation' missive

  6 Nov 2009 | 4:04 pm

  Code: Your solace, our savior Exclusive Sun Microsystems has set software engineers seven goals in the wake of new layoffs, hoping to keep them focused amid uncertainty but to also hit existing corporate objectives.…Offloading malware protection to the cloud

• 
  Flash Magazine

• TAC interview - learn to organize a conference from the pro’s

  Lionel Low

  12 Oct 2009 | 8:53 am

  The Actionscript Conference (TAC) kicked off in the middle of September and was a big success. It is a community based conference and we wanted to learn more about how one goes about to organize a community conference and make sure it's a success. In this interview, TAC's Lionel Low interviews conference organizer Hu Shunjie who explains The BIG 5's of putting on an event like this.

• Flash for the IPhone!

  Jens C Brynildsen

  5 Oct 2009 | 10:20 am

  At the Adobe MAX keynote the announcement everyone was hoping and waiting for - Flash on the iPhone is coming! It won't be Flash Player in the browser, but you will be able to use Flash to author iPhone applications that runs natively on the iPhone.

• New Flash Player info and Beta releases on Adobe Labs

  Jens C Brynildsen

  4 Oct 2009 | 11:37 pm

  As a warm-up to the Adobe MAX conference, Adobe today released details about Flash Player 10.1 for desktop and mobile and updated beta versions of Flash Builder, Flash Catalyst, Coldfusion, the Flex 4 SDK and Livecycle Data Services.

• Flash on the beach 2009 - Day 3

  John Dalziel

  23 Sep 2009 | 8:30 am

  Even after two days of sessions and parties there was still an impressive turnout for the 9am sessions on day 3 at Flash on the beach. The day was filled with great sessions, but "the bomb" was certainly Ralph Hauwert announcing that he has quit the Papervision3D team to pursue personal goals. This means that PapervisionX is up in the air, but not entirely.

• Flash on the beach 2009 - Day 2

  Jens C Brynildsen

  22 Sep 2009 | 2:18 pm

  Despite the official party at Audio and the usual follow up at The Old Ship Hotel, the Brighton Dome was almost full for the first session of Day 2. A brand new session type in the form of 3 minute elevator pitches proved really successful and Joa Ebert had everyone cheering at the Actionscript optimization tools he built while being sick.

• 
  Joel on Software

• Upgrade your career

  5 Nov 2009 | 5:34 am

  Do you like your job? Do you enjoy the people you work with? Would you want to have lunch with them? Every day? Alex Papadimoulis thinks that FogTyler Griffin Hicks-Wright Creek’s free lunches are “cultish,” but everyone at Fog Creek loves them. Maybe it’s the mandatory brain implant we install in each new worker, but I like to think that we just enjoy eating together because we genuinely like each other and like spending time together. If you can’t imagine eating lunch every day with your coworkers, I hate to break it to you: you might not like them. Is it OK to spend most of your…

• Does Slow Growth Equal Slow Death?

  3 Nov 2009 | 4:50 pm

  My new Inc. column is up. “For a guy who wrote a book on how to hire great programmers, it’s mortifying how incompetent I’ve been at enlarging the sales team, which, right now, consists of one terrific account executive and a dog. (I’m just kidding. There’s no dog.)” Need to hire a really great programmer? Want a job that doesn't drive you crazy? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

• Figuring out what your company is all about

  1 Nov 2009 | 1:51 pm

  What is your company about? Recently I got inspired by Kathy Sierra, whose blog Creating Passionate Users and Head First series of books revolutionized developer education. She kept saying the same thing again and again: help your users be awesome. Kathy taught me that if you can’t explain your mission in the form, “We help $TYPE_OF_PERSON be awesome at $THING,” you are not going to have passionate users. What’s your tagline? Can you fit it into that template? It took us nine years, but we finally worked out what Fog Creek Software is all about, which I’ll tell you in a moment, but…

• Adam Bosworth on standards

  31 Oct 2009 | 9:50 pm

  Adam Bosworth: “All successful standards are as simple as possible, not as hard as possible.” Required reading. Need to hire a really great programmer? Want a job that doesn't drive you crazy? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

• Capstone projects and time management

  26 Oct 2009 | 5:36 pm

  It is amazing how easy it is to sail through a Computer Science degree from a top university without ever learning the basic tools of software developers, without ever working on a team, and without ever taking a course for which you don’t get an automatic F for collaborating. Many CS departments are trapped in the 1980s, teaching the same old curriculum that has by now become completely divorced from the reality of modern software development. Where are students supposed to learn about version control, bug tracking, working on teams, scheduling, estimating, debugging, usability testing,…

• 
  Life Beyond Code

• Event: Thought Leadership 2.0

  Rajesh Setty

  3 Nov 2009 | 11:10 am

  If you are in the bay area on November 18, I would love to see you at this event where I will be speaking about how to build thought leadership without breaking your back. A quick summary Thought Leadership 2.0 Building thought leadership without breaking your back Everyone knows the benefit of being established as a thought leader. For starters, there is an immediate trustworthiness associated with thought leaders that will increase your influence as you are perceived as someone who “knows” and who “cares.” In the old world, tools to build thought leadership included…

• Apples and Oranges: The pitch for pre-paid gas option

  Rajesh Setty

  22 Oct 2009 | 11:36 pm

  Yesterday I was at the Hertz counter in Los Angeles and there were about half a dozen people in front of me in the line. I was surprised (actually shocked) to see four of the six people in front of me choose the pre-paid gas option. For those of you who don’t know what is pre-paid gas option, you pay for the entire tank of gas and you can return the car with an empty tank. A quick side note: I know there are some nit-pickers who might be reading it. You can’t return a car with an EMPTY gas tank (you will need to get it towed, literally) so that is not the point of the blog post.

• Mini Saga #41 – Loan

  Rajesh Setty

  19 Oct 2009 | 1:10 am

  Photo Courtesy: Melissa Maples on Flickr Sometimes we take things literally. Enjoy the story: Loan Rick stopped someone in the lobby and said – “I am from the office next door. Can you please lend me $1000?” The person flatly refused stating that he doesn’t know Rick well. With a confused look, Rick said – “That’s odd. My coworkers won’t lend me saying they know me too well.” Note: 1. A mini saga is a story told in exactly 50 words. Not 49 or 51 but exactly 50. 2. You can download a photographic manifesto of Mini Sagas at ChangeThis. Here…

• Recharging while sweating…

  Rajesh Setty

  13 Oct 2009 | 1:10 am

  Some background first… The day before I went for a long hike (long is relative BTW) I told my friend Arun that I was planning to go on a hike the next day. Arun asked me – “So where are you going?” And I proudly mentioned that it was “Rancho San Antonio,” he just laughed and said – “It is not a hike, it’s a walk.” Of course, he would said that being an avid hiker. For me, being on the hiking trails for the first time, it was definitely a HIKE. Why share the background? Simply because I know there will be some other avid hikers out…

• Mini Saga #40 – Dream

  Rajesh Setty

  12 Oct 2009 | 1:10 am

  Photo Courtesy: Bobasonic on Flickr Sometimes dreams can be unbelievable Enjoy the story: Dream Rick handed the keys to his Ferrari to the Valet guy and the phone rang. Actually it was the phone in his office. It was all a dream! Rick smiled and got up and walked towards his Mercedes. Just then, he heard a voice – “Wake up, you will miss the train.” Note: 1. A mini saga is a story told in exactly 50 words. Not 49 or 51 but exactly 50. 2. You can download a photographic manifesto of Mini Sagas at ChangeThis. Here is the link – Mini Sagas: Bite-sized Wisdom for Life and…

• 
  Jon Udell

• Talking with Marco Barulli about zero-knowledge online password management

  Jon Udell

  1 Nov 2009 | 11:51 pm

  A couple of years ago I was enamored with a clever password manager that pointed the way toward an ideal solution. It was really just a bookmarklet — a small chunk of JavaScript code — that used a simple method to produce a unique and strong password for the website you were visiting. The method was to combine a passphrase that you could remember with the domain name of the site, using a one-way cryptographic hash, in order to produce a strong password that would be unique to the site — and that you’d otherwise never be able to remember. It wasn’t perfect.

• A literary appreciation of the Olson/Zoneinfo/tz database

  Jon Udell

  23 Oct 2009 | 7:45 am

  You will probably never need to know about the Olson database, also known as the Zoneinfo or tz database. And were it not for my elmcity project I never would have looked into it. I knew roughly that this bedrock database is a compendium of definitions of the world’s timezones, plus rules for daylight savings transitions (DST), used by many operating systems and programming languages. I presumed that it was written Unix-style, in some kind of plain-text format, and that’s true. Here, for example, are top-level DST rules for the United States since 1918: # Rule NAME FROM TO IN ON…

• More Python and C# idioms: Finding the difference between two lists

  Jon Udell

  22 Oct 2009 | 4:20 pm

  Recently I’ve posted two examples[1, 2] of Python idioms alongside corresponding C# idioms. It always intrigues me to look at the same concept through different lenses, and it seems to intrigue others as well, so here’s a third installment. Today’s example comes from a real scenario. I’ve recently added a feature to the elmcity service that enables curators to control their hubs by sending Twitter direct messages to the service. One method, GetDirectMessagesFromTwitter, calls the Twitter API and returns a list of direct messages sent to the elmcity service. Another…

• To: elmcity, From: @curator, Message: start

  Jon Udell

  21 Oct 2009 | 10:41 am

  Because I am lazy, curious, and evangelical, the elmcity service works in an unusual way. Anything that I can delegate to other services I do. So when curators add feeds to hubs, or modify the behavior of hubs, they do it by bookmarking and tagging URLs at delicious.com. It would be foolish to only keep that registry and configuration data in delicious, so I don’t, I persist it to Azure tables. But for now, I’m delegating the data entry interface to delicious. It’s a lazy approach, in the good sense of lazy. I don’t want to build my own data entry system unless I can…

• Restructuring expert attention to revive the lost art of personal customer service

  Jon Udell

  20 Oct 2009 | 6:27 am

  Instead of mourning the lost art of personal customer service, I would rather celebrate examples that show it’s still possible. Yesterday I found two gems. First, Southwest Airlines. I had booked a round-trip flight and then needed to change to one-way. You can’t do that online. So I clenched my jaw, called customer service, and prepared for the long wait. Instead, this: IVR: “Would you like us to call you back in about 20 minutes?” Me: “Why…yes! Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, #.” My jaw relaxed. Twenty or so minutes later, an agent called…

• 
  Rands In Repose

• The Foamy Rules for Rabid Tools

  michael.lopp@gmail.com

  2 Nov 2009 | 11:56 am

  The brother-in-law lives in the 'burbs and needed five trees removed. Not big trees -- 10 to 15 feet tall, six-inch trunks. Not a problem. I live on the edge of a redwood forest in Northern California. There are sturdy oaks, playful maples, lovely madrones, weed-like bay laurels, and, of course, giant redwoods. But the pleasure of living in a forest has a tax. Trees fall and trees die, and in a forest of any significant size, this is always happening. You need a chainsaw. In my case, I need three. There's Junior, who is great at handling the small jobs. He's light and ladder friendly. Then…

• The Leaper

  michael.lopp@gmail.com

  11 Oct 2009 | 11:14 pm

  On my short list of professional competitive differentiators, I would list my inbox strategy. I have a zero tolerance policy for unread mails. Zero. Any mail, however big or small, which lands in my inbox, is instantly read. There is an industrial strength set of mail filters that move mailing list noise out of the way, and yes, that means I ignore a good portion of my incoming mail, but most mail addressed directly to me is consistently and expediently read. There are other inbox strategies I employ to figure out when and how I respond, too, but I admit the combination of these strategies is…

• Hurry

  michael.lopp@gmail.com

  1 Oct 2009 | 9:24 pm

  Most interesting ideas come to me between 8am and 10am. This is sacred time. The day is young, I am rested, and the coffee is fresh. I spend most of this time in the car driving to work. The music is providing a creative, catalyzing ambiance to structure my thinking. I create two or three start-ups during the average drive to work. And then I get to work and I google my ideas. "How about a service that adds threading to Twitter?" Fuck. "Wait wait wait, what we need is people feeds. An RSS-type thing that shows me the relevant events for the people I care about." Goddammit. You're in a hurry.

• The Crisis and the Creative

  michael.lopp@gmail.com

  28 Sep 2009 | 10:16 pm

  If you polled my team about my daily agenda, they'd say, "He's either running to meetings or in meetings." Glancing at my calendar confirms this: 14 meetings this coming Monday - double-booked for five of them. Sweet. Yes, I go to meetings all day, but it's more than that. I'm also managing a constant distracting flood of interesting decisions that find me no matter where I'm sitting. When they arrive, I must make an instant prioritization call: Crisis or Creative? A Spectrum for Everything This will be the third system I've described regarding prioritization. The Taste of the Day describes…

• Your People

  michael.lopp@gmail.com

  7 Sep 2009 | 3:39 pm

  In your career as a geek, there's a list of essential career intangibles. These are the things you need to do in order to be successful, which are also maddeningly difficult to measure. There is no direct correlation between completing these activities and a raise. It's unlikely that accomplishing these indefinite tasks will end up in your review, but via organizational and social osmosis, you've learned these intangibles are essential in order to grow. I want to talk about one: networking. There are two types of networking. Basic networking is what you do at work. It's a target rich…

• 
  School of Flash

• Motion Tweens in Flash CS3 and CS4

  Craig

  12 Oct 2009 | 5:31 am

  Some of our students wanted to know if they would be able to follow along with the new 'Flash CS4: Step 1' training course if they had Flash CS3. The answer is yes. There are a few new features in CS4 that you won't be able to follow along with, but for the most part, everything else is the same. There is one big difference in functionality, however, that I would like to address, and that's the way Motion Tweens are handled. So, if you're using Flash CS3 and watching the CS4 video series, this tutorial will come in handy. But even if you're not watching the video course, this tutorial is a…

• ActionScript 3 Tutorial – A Better Preloader

  Craig

  9 Oct 2009 | 2:41 pm

  Having problems with your preloader? It's to be expected. Preloaders have a history of causing a lot of grief among Flash designers. Even once you get the loader bar working, you'll often find that it takes the preloader itself several seconds before it shows up. Which defeats the purpose of having a preloader in the first place. So you dive in deeper and quickly discover that there are a dozen tweaks that have to be made just to get your preloader to show up quicker. In today's free ActionScript tutorial, you'll learn a better way to create preloaders--a way that doesn't require a bunch of…

• Flash Tutorial – Orient to Path

  Craig

  8 Oct 2009 | 7:48 am

  The following Flash video tutorial is an excerpt from the new School of Flash video course, Flash CS4: Step 1. In this course, you'll learn the basics of drawing, animating, ActionScript programming, and website building in Flash CS4. In this excerpt, I'll show you how to create an animation where the animated object automatically rotates to face the direction of movement. Click here to learn more about the 'Flash CS4: Step 1' video training course.

• Tutorial – How to Add Video in Flash CS4

  Craig

  7 Oct 2009 | 10:43 am

  The following Flash video tutorial is an excerpt from the new School of Flash video course, Flash CS4: Step 1. In this course, you'll learn the basics of drawing, animating, ActionScript programming, and website building in Flash CS4. In this excerpt, I'll show you how you can VERY EASILY add video to your Flash website. Click here to learn more about the 'Flash CS4: Step 1' video training course.

• Flash Video Training Course Now Available

  Craig

  6 Oct 2009 | 11:04 am

  Close your technical books and open up your mind! School of Flash is now selling full-length Flash training classes. Our first course, released today, is called "Flash CS4: Step 1." This is a beginner level Flash course that will get you up to speed on the basics of Flash. In it, you will learn how to draw, animate, and build basic websites using Flash CS4 and ActionScript 3. This video course contains over 7 1/2 hours of Flash and ActionScript tutorials. As a celebration for the grand opening of the School of Flash online store, I'm going to offer these videos for 50% OFF to the first 100…

• 
  VITAMIN

• Dan Cederholm on Bulletproof Web Design, CSS3 and Dribbble

  Keir Whitaker

  6 Nov 2009 | 5:50 am

  Today’s entry  in our series of web deisgn interviews is Dan Cederholm. Dan is a recognized expert in the field of standards-based web design and has worked with Google, MTV, AIGA, ESPN, Blogger, Fast Company, Inc.com, and many more. He’s a renowned speaker and author and blogs about web design related topics at SimpleBits. Editor’s Note: Dan will be hosting a full day workshop with Ethan Marcotte on “Handcrafted Bulletproof CSS” in London, UK on November 23rd, buy your ticket online now. He will also be speaking about “Progressive Enrichment” at The…

• Client Side Code Highlighting Made Easy

  Keir Whitaker

  5 Nov 2009 | 8:16 am

  I have recently been working on a little out of hours PHP project called “Dummy“. The code is almost complete, apart from the obligatory prettifying of indents and comments, which means it’s time to turn my attention to the online documentation. As part of the “How to Use” page I need to show small PHP code examples. I also want them to look very readable and be easy to copy and paste. Hand cranking each code snippet using <span>’s, spaces and CSS clearly isn’t the way to go, there has to be an easy way. Server Side Options Having used Pygments…

• Steve Smith on HTML5 and CSS3

  Keir Whitaker

  4 Nov 2009 | 3:23 am

  Next up in our series of web deisgn interviews is Steve Smith from Ordered List. Steve is a recognised authority on front-end development, interface design and is also the co-founder of Sidebar Creative. As an author, public speaker, and University of Notre Dame professor, he is passionate about sharing his knowledge with others. Editor’s Note: Steve will be hosting a workshop on “How to build a HTML5/CSS3 Website Today” at The Future of Web Design New York on November 16-17 2009. You can buy your ticket online now. What’s all the fuss about HTML5 and CSS3? For me, the big…

• Five Must-follow Twitter Lists

  Ryan Carson

  29 Oct 2009 | 4:42 pm

  You might’ve heard the news that Twitter Lists are alive and kicking. If you don’t know what they are, here’s a brief explanation: Any Twitter user can create a list of people on Twitter, which can be followed with one click. For example, all the people on the Carsonified Team can be found at twitter.com/carsonified/team. We’re with Robert Scoble on this one: We LOVE this idea (see his great write-up here). It’s going to make Twitter even more valuable because you’ll be able to easily find and follow the type of people you’re interested in. Here are…

• Karl Swedberg on jQuery

  Keir Whitaker

  29 Oct 2009 | 4:31 am

  Next up in our series of short interviews is Karl Swedberg. Karl is the principal author at Learning jQuery and regularly presents and blogs about JavaScript and jQuery. Editor’s Note: Karl will be hosting a workshop on “jQuery for Designers” at The Future of Web Design New York on November 16-17 2009. You can buy your ticket online now. For designers that might not of heard of it, what is JQuery? jQuery is a tool to help designers and developers add interactive elements to their web pages. At the risk of oversimplifying, jQuery’s core feature is a set of commands that…

• 
  IBM developerWorks

• Writing a custom Dojo application

  Explore the tips, techniques, and pitfalls when developing Web 2.0 and Dojo applications. Learn from the authors' experiences when moving from Object Oriented development techniques to creating a prototype using the Dojo widget and template pattern along with JavaScript/Dojo objects.

• Debug Java applications remotely with Eclipse

  Perform application debugging remotely using the Eclipse built-in remote Java application configuration type. In this article, get real-world examples such as debugging programs on dedicated machines like Web servers, whose services cannot be shut down.

• New IBM Business Process Management Journal

  In this journal's premier edition, discover how to develop a business event processing application and how to leverage BPM, SOA, and EA to align business and IT. Plus, get answers to some of your common questions about WebSphere Business Modeler.

• Dependency injection with Guice: Testable code with less boilerplate

  Get better testing and modularity while taking away the pain of writing your own factories with Guice, Google's open source dependency injection framework for Java development. Take a tour of the most important concepts, which will leave you ready to Guice up your applications.

• XSLT as a language compiler: Use XSLT to produce PostScript from XML

  Explore the concept of XSLT as a programming language compiler, specifically as you create an XML facade in front of PostScript, to produce PostScript files from XML documents. Learn about using a stylesheet as an implicit language definition, get the basics of PostScript, and see the layers of abstraction involved in creating an XML-to-PostScript compiler.

• 
  ScottGu's Blog

• November Conferences

  ScottGu

  2 Nov 2009 | 10:05 pm

  I’m doing keynotes at two big conferences later this month: ASP.NET Connections in Las Vegas: November 9th to 12th I’ll be doing a keynote talking about ASP.NET 4 and VS 2010 at the ASP.NET Connections conference next week.  I’ll also be doing an evening Q&A session together with the ASP.NET team. ASP.NET Connections is a great conference that is jointly hosted with the VS, SharePoint, SQL and Windows Connections conferences (enabling you to choose from tons of great sessions).  The speakers at the event are also really top-notch. You can learn more about the conference…

• Add Reference Dialog Improvements (VS 2010 and .NET 4.0 Series)

  ScottGu

  29 Oct 2009 | 12:12 am

  [In addition to blogging, I am now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu (@scottgu is my twitter name)] This is the twelfth in a series of blog posts I’m doing on the upcoming VS 2010 and .NET 4 release.  Today’s post covers a small, but nice, change coming with VS 2010 – an “Add Reference” dialog that loads fast. Add Reference Dialog in VS 2008 The slow performance of the “Add Reference” dialog in previous releases of Visual Studio has been a common complaint that many a developer (including yours truly) has ranted about.

• WPF 4 (VS 2010 and .NET 4.0 Series)

  ScottGu

  26 Oct 2009 | 11:11 pm

  [In addition to blogging, I am now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. You can follow me on Twitter at: twitter.com/scottgu (@scottgu is my twitter name)] This is the eleventh in a series of blog posts I’m doing on the upcoming VS 2010 and .NET 4 release.  Today’s post covers WPF 4. WPF 4 Improvements WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) is one of the core components of the .NET Framework, and enables developers to build rich, differentiated Windows client applications.  WPF 4 includes major productivity, performance and capability improvements – in particular…

• VS 2010 Code Intellisense Improvements (VS 2010 and .NET 4.0 Series)

  ScottGu

  22 Oct 2009 | 11:47 pm

  This is the tenth in a series of blog posts I’m doing on the upcoming VS 2010 and .NET 4 release.  In today’s blog post I’m going to cover a small but really nice improvement to code intellisense with VS 2010 – which is its ability to better filter type and member code completion.  This enables you to more easily find and use APIs when writing code. Code Intellisense with VS 2008 To help illustrate this intellisense improvements coming with VS 2010, let’s start by doing a simple scenario in VS 2008 where we want to write some code to enable an editing scenario with a…

• Searching and Navigating Code in VS 2010 (VS 2010 and .NET 4.0 Series)

  ScottGu

  21 Oct 2009 | 12:50 am

  This is the ninth in a series of blog posts I’m doing on the upcoming VS 2010 and .NET 4 release.  In today’s blog post I’m going to cover some of the new code searching and navigation features that are now built-into VS 2010. Searching and Navigating code Developers need to be able to easily navigate, search and understand the code-base they are working on.  In usability studies we’ve done, we typically find that developers spend more time reading, reviewing and searching existing code than actually writing new code.  The VS 2010 code editor adds some nice new features…

• 
  Perlbuzz

• What editor/IDE do you use for Perl development?

  Andy Lester

  21 Oct 2009 | 3:33 pm

  Gabor Szabo is running a survey about Perl development: I have set up a simple five-second poll to find out what editor(s) or IDE(s) people use for Perl development. I'd appreciate very much if you clicked on the link and answered the question. You can mark up to 3 answers. Please also forward this mail in the company you are working and to people in your previous company so we can get a large and diverse set of responses. The poll will be closed within a week or after we reached 1000 voters. Whichever comes first.

• Perlbuzz news roundup for 2009-10-21

  Andy Lester

  21 Oct 2009 | 9:11 am

  These links are collected from the Perlbuzz Twitter feed. If you have suggestions for news bits, please mail me at andy@perlbuzz.com. How the Portland PostgreSQL users group had a Patch-a-Thon (pugs.postgresql.org) Padre 0.47 integrates better with Windows (ahmadzawawi.blogspot.com) Tim Bunce's Perl Myths talk, updated for 2009 (slideshare.net) Free Perl book excerpts from O'Reilly (oreilly.com) Building your career in open source (itworld.com) Getting the Perl Mongers into shape (szabgab.com) François Perrad's talk on the Parrot VM now online (slideshare.net) If you're not checking the…

• Perlbuzz news roundup for 2009-09-24

  Andy Lester

  24 Sep 2009 | 11:09 am

  These links are collected from the Perlbuzz Twitter feed. If you have suggestions for news bits, please mail me at andy@perlbuzz.com. Perl described in five sentences (blog.timbunce.org) RT @chromatic_x perl 6 is some 6% faster today. You're welcome. "Perl is full of odd, and they like it like that." (twitter.com) Why Users Dumped Your Open Source App for Proprietary Software (itworld.com) Book review of The Definitive Guide to Catalyst (dave.org.uk) YAPC::NA 2009 survey results available (use.perl.org) RT chromatic_x Rakudo Perl 6 passes 26% more spectests (and the test suite has grown by…

• Perlbuzz news roundup for 2009-09-09

  Andy Lester

  9 Sep 2009 | 7:21 am

  These links are collected from the Perlbuzz Twitter feed. If you have suggestions for news bits, please mail me at andy@perlbuzz.com. Perl projects for newbies (szabgab.com) On Moose and speed (blog.afoolishmanifesto.com) perldoc.perl.org updated with Perl 5.10.1 docs (use.perl.org) From user to contributor (use.perl.org) Hash JavaScript with Template::Toolkit for improved caching (blog.greenfelt.net) Dave Rolsky teaching a one-day Moose class (blog.urth.org) Why I love Perl already (thejoysofcomputing.wordpress.com) Is your Perl community visible? (blog.timbunce.org) Don't optimize for…

• Mentoring in open source communities: What works? What doesn't?

  Andy Lester

  8 Sep 2009 | 6:54 pm

  By Esther Schindler Open source offers amazing opportunities. There are almost no barriers to entry. If you want to try creating a new-to-you kind of application, or to learn how to write bright-shiny documentation, or to use the latest technology that your Day Job doesn't give you access to -- you can just barrel right in with an open source project and get involved. Once you become proficient (or demonstrate that you already are), you can apply those skills in the next phase of your career. Even better, you can choose which community you want to be a part of, and find a comfortable culture…

• 
  Knowing.NET

• Google Releases Their “Closure” JavaScript Library

  larry

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:24 am

  Google Code Blog: Introducing Closure Tools. Given Google’s resources, goals, and products, this automatically becomes a leading candidate as a “standard library” for developers doing JavaScript work (i.e., anyone working with the Web). Not sure of its overlap / incompatibility with other major libraries, but this will definitely reward study.

• MonoTouch / MonoDevelop Gets Debugging Support

  larry

  5 Nov 2009 | 1:55 pm

  Introducing Debugging for MonoTouch - Miguel de Icaza. I’ve been very impressed by MonoTouch and MonoDevelop for iPhone programming: it’s a great combination of the CocoaTouch APIs (which are very nice) and the C# programming language (which is my favorite mainstream language if you don’t think that Ruby has crossed the chasm). The major challenge has been a lack of debugging. Well, it’s a challenge no more. In my SD Times column, I said that (even without debugging) “MonoTouch is the best entry point for C# developers interested in seeing what all the hubbub is…

• My Interviews of Gamma et al. and Grady Booch

  larry

  3 Nov 2009 | 11:00 am

  The 15th anniversary of the release of Design Patterns led to the following interviews: Design Patterns 15 Years Later: An Interview with Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, and Ralph Johnson Grady Booch on Design Patterns, OOP, and Coffee

• Restoring From the Archives

  larry

  2 Nov 2009 | 2:52 pm

  I posted two old articles that were perennial Google link-bait: Genetic Algorithms in C# Programming Sabre in C#, Java, and XML I’d lost the articles as part of switching from DasBlog to WordPress.

• Dictated Using MacSpeech Dictate

  larry

  1 Nov 2009 | 12:21 pm

  /hosts is defeated using MacSpeech Dictate. Well, that was not very successful first sentence, was it? This blog post is being dictated using MacSpeech Dictate. That’s more like it. I am using the jawbone Bluetooth headset, connected to my Mac. Actually, the word was “A.” not “the” in the previous sentence. In general, I am not a great fan of voice dictation software, which often has both gross mistakes where nonsensical words are returned and fine mistakes, where short connecting words are lost or transposed. This is all okay,. Sigh. This is all a pity, because…

• 
  jQuery Blog

• What Bug Needs to be Fixed for jQuery 1.4?

  John Resig

  30 Oct 2009 | 12:39 pm

  Want to make sure that your “favorite” jQuery bug is fixed in time for the upcoming 1.4 release? Then tell the jQuery dev team using the below form.

• 2009 jQuery Halloween Pumpkin

  John Resig

  30 Oct 2009 | 12:29 pm

  In a repeat of last year’s phenominal jQuery pumpkin Christopher Pickert is back with a brand new jQuery 1.3-using pumpkin that’s sure to frighten visitors: Thanks again to Christopher for this great creation.

• jQuery Summit - Nov. 19th

  John Resig

  22 Oct 2009 | 6:00 am

  Environments for Humans is running a one-day, online conference focusing on jQuery. The conference will be on November 19th and will feature a number of prominent members of the jQuery community, including members of the jQuery team. The following talks are slated for the jQuery Summit: The State of jQuery - John Resig Web Interface Essentials - Marc Grabanski RIAs: Building for the Desktop with the Web - Jonathan Snook Rich Interactivity, Simplified, with jQuery UI - Richard Worth Refactoring jQuery - Jonathan Sharp JavaScript for Designers - David McFarland Building Robust jQuery Plugins -…

• code.jquery.com Redirected to Google Ajax APIs

  Mike Hostetler

  20 Aug 2009 | 11:02 am

  Starting at 10PM MT on August 20th, code.jquery.com will start redirecting (301) to ajax.googleapis.com [http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/documentation/index.html#jquery]. Immediate Impact: None Redirection will occur using 301 “Permanent Moved” Packed version will be replaced with minified version Long Term: Migrate any sites using code.jquery.com to Google’s AJAX Libraries API Full documentation of Google’s Ajax API are available at http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/documentation/index.html#jquery. For your convenience here are the old URLs on…

• Fall 2009 jQuery Talks

  John Resig

  14 Aug 2009 | 10:54 am

  Reminder: While the upcoming jQuery Conference is already sold out, we’re still looking for some excellent talks. We’re accepting talk proposals until the 15th. If your talk is accepted your ticket fee will be waived. Even if you can’t make the jQuery Conference, though, there are a number of opportunities to meet members of the jQuery team, hear talks about jQuery, or generally mingle with other jQuery users coming up in the next couple months. If you happen to know of any other talks or events please comment below and we’ll add them. Workshop: Conquering jQuery with…

• 
  Channel 9

• Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) and Software Security Today

  Charles

  6 Nov 2009 | 1:49 pm

  The Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) team recently released two new security tools, BinScope Binary Analyzer and MiniFuzz File Fuzzer, to help you write more secure code. Jeremy Dallman, Michael Howard, and Ivan Medvedev created these tools so we decided to pay them a visit to chat about what these tools do and why they matter. Of course, it's been way too long since Michael Howard has preached to us from his security soapbox so we just had to get him talking about the general state of software security today and where it's going! For the Microsoft SDL team, SDL is as much a…

• Windows Identity Foundation RC is here!

  Vittorio Bertocci

  6 Nov 2009 | 10:05 am

  The release candidate of Windows Identity Foundation is here! Chock-full of improvements driven by YOUR feedback, WIF RC gives a very good idea of how the final release will look like. Vittorio went to visit Sidd, Govind and Sesha to learn about the new features and explore the rationale behind some of them. From a comprehensive list of new features to deep dives in their favourite scenarios, the guys tell it all. Tune in! URL references: WIF RC Announcement Download the Windows Identity Foundation RC The Identity key topic on Channel 9

• Microsoft Help Viewer - New Help System in Visual Studio 2010

  Kathleen McGrath

  5 Nov 2009 | 4:25 pm

  In this video, Ryan Linton, a Senior Program Manager on the Library Experience Team, describes the new Help system in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2.  Kathleen McGrath Visual Studio User Education http://blogs.msdn.com/kathleen Visual Studio and .NET Framework Content Survey

• Life at Microsoft: The truth revealed...again!

  tina10

  5 Nov 2009 | 12:54 pm

  False rumors about life at Microsoft abound, like "drinking the juice" or sleeping at our desks; even that everybody watches Battlestar Galactica. Truth is: only most of us watch it. In a continued effort to debunk the rumors once and for all, I present to you - Life at Microsoft Episode 2.   If you missed the first episode, go check it out!

• Announcing Channel 9’s first live broadcast - This Week on C9 this Friday!

  Dan Fernandez

  5 Nov 2009 | 10:03 am

  Updated: Watch us live at http://live.ch9.ms today at 3:00 PM PST! Mark your calendars, on Friday,  November 6th at 3:00PM Pacific Standard Time, Channel 9 will host its first live broadcast for This Week on Channel 9! We’ll have a special Web page setup for our live streaming player and you’ll be able to ask us questions in real-time via Twitter. Start following @ch9live on Twitter for more information. FAQ: Q: Do I need anything special to watch the live stream? A: You just need Silverlight installed. Q: How do I watch the live stream? A: We’ll be posting the URL Friday morning PST?

• 
  TheServerSide.com: News

• RESTEasy 1.2 Released

  6 Nov 2009 | 3:51 am

  RESTEasy 1.2, JBoss's JAX-RS framework for writing RESTFul web services, has been released. While mostly a bug fix and refactoring release there are some features of note.

• 101 on HTTPS Web Site Performance

  6 Nov 2009 | 3:51 am

  I recently analyzed a secure web page that took 20 seconds till the onLoad event triggered. It turned out that 70% of the time was spent in SSL handshaking. With a simple change on the web server the 14 seconds could be trimmed down to 2. Read the <a href="http://blog.dynatrace.com/2009/10/28/">full analysis </a>

• ZK 3.6.3 Released

  6 Nov 2009 | 3:45 am

  ZK has released version 3.6.3 which brings about improvements in the performance of applications in addition to introducing several new & improved features and fixing over 70 bugs.

• WebSphere eXtreme Scale REST Data Service Technology Preview 3

  4 Nov 2009 | 4:53 pm

  The WebSphere eXtreme Scale development team has just released technical preview 3 of the WebSphere eXtreme Scale REST data service.

• Induction v1.3.0b released

  4 Nov 2009 | 4:53 pm

  The most compelling MVC framework for Java has raised the bar again! Induction v1.3.0b introduces support for powerful request interceptors and further expands the capabilities of its unrivaled short URL resolvers.

• 
  Java.net

• Roger Kitain: Using CDI and Dependency Injection for Java in a JSF 2.0 Application

  editor

  5 Nov 2009 | 8:15 pm

  Roger Kitain has posted a new Enterprise Tech Tip, Using CDI and Dependency Injection for Java in a JSF 2.0 Application: This Tech Tip covers the intersection of three powerful technologies that are part of the Java EE 6 platform: JSR 299: Contexts and Dependency Injection, JSR 330: Dependency Injection For Java, and JSR 314: JavaServer Faces 2.0. JSR 299: Contexts and Dependency Injection (CDI) defines a set of services for the Java EE environment that makes applications much easier to develop. It provides an architecture that allows Java EE components such as servlets, enterprise beans, and…

• robilad's Latest OpenJDK Roundup

  editor

  5 Nov 2009 | 8:11 pm

  robilad presents his latest OpenJDK roundup: In OpenJDK 6, Andrew Hughes finished backporting the Nimbus Swing Look & Feel. Kelly O'Hair meanwhile went ahead and restructured the jaxp & jaxws repositories to follow a new component delivery model. Milestone 5 in OpenJDK 7 has been extended in late October to cover build 76 to allow the JSR 166y integration to happen. Martin Buchholz pushed that code in earlier this week, while Joe Darcy did the same for his implementation of the Strings in Switch language change from Project Coin... Community:  OpenJDK

• Michael Huttermann Announces Jason van Zyl Maven 3 Presentation in Cologne

  editor

  5 Nov 2009 | 8:08 pm

  Java Champion Michael Huttermann writes about the upcoming Maven 3 talk in Cologne, by Jason van Zyl: I'm very proud that Jason van Zyl, founder and driver of Maven, will give a talk about Maven 3 in Cologne for the Java User Group, on November, 16th. I'm also very proud that I managed to catch another international high-end speaker for a presentation, for coming to Germany. Again, other groups profit from my preparatory work, and invited him too, now, for making a small side trip there. I will never understand, why there are few to zero cooperations between Java user groups, and where the…

• 
  The Daily WTF

• Error'd: Unexpected Accessory

  6 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

  "While shopping for dishwashers," Eric Steele writes, "I came across a dishwasher that had a somewhat unexpected accessory."   "What a sweet bargain at Mac's Pizza Shack," Chris writes, "I mean, maybe you're supposed to write in your savings, right?   "I was looking for some spark plugs on eBay," writes Mike H, "and right-clicked on a product code. Who knew that was such a serious offense?"   "I thought I would be helpful and give some feedback on my hotel stay," Aaron Bingham writes, "but somehow, the effort…

• Classic WTF: Keepin' It Cool

  5 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

  Keepin' It Cool was originally published on October 4, 2006 A few years ago, Phil was working as a developer on a wire transfer application at a large bank. To make sure that nothing technical would prevent the bank from extracting maximum amounts of money from its operations, every part of their system had a redundancy with fast failovers and clustering. In fact, there was even one server (and a backup of that server) whose only function was to monitor the other server and send notifications if anything fell out of the operations norm. When a system or process failed, the monitoring server…

• CodeSOD: Slightly OverSQL'd

  4 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

  "A certain coworker of mine likes to do everything in SQL," Christoffer Hoel writes, "and I mean everything." "Of course, since our management is non-technical, there's very little any of us can do aside from just toletarting the code. After all, his code runs about the same as ours... and that's all that matters, right?" // Check if date is valid! String allowed = "not allowed"; sql = "SELECT IF(DATE(?) <= DATE(?),'allowed','not allowed')"; stmt = con.prepareStatement(sql); stmt.setString(1, firstDate); stmt.setString(2, terminationDate);…

• Tales from the Interview: The Shoe-In

  3 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

  Once word hit that certain departments within South England Financial were going to be outsourced, employees naturally started to get a bit nervious. Being a contractor — and therefore exempt from any kind of nice severance package — Jon Kipper was determined to find a new job before the axe fell. After about a month of tossing his resumé out into the world, Jon received a call from a very perky recuriter regarding a position that was almost a dead ringer to what he was doing. Although the position was in London — a good two hours from his flat by train — Jon…

• CodeSOD: The Utility Package

  2 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

  "It took months of low quality, late delivered code," Scott C writes, "but a certain coder on our team was finally let go." "I was the lucky one assigned to clean up some of his old code and noticed that several classes of his made reference to a particular utility package. I opened the package and found a single class with 24 methods filled with sad code." public static boolean isNull(String val) { boolean error=false; if(val==null) { error=true; } return error ; } public static boolean isNotNull(String val) { boolean error=false; if(val==null) { error=true; ; }…

• 
  The Old New Thing

• Signs that the symbols in your stack trace are wrong

  oldnewthing

  6 Nov 2009 | 7:00 am

  One of the things programmers send to each other when they are trying to collaborate on a debugging problem is stack traces. Usually something along the lines of "My program does X, then Y, then Z, and then it crashes. Here is a stack trace. Can you tell me what's wrong?" It helps if you at least glance at the stack trace before you send it, because there are often signs that the stack trace you're about to send is completely useless because the symbols are wrong. Here's an example: We are testing our program and it gradually grinds to a halt. When we connect a debugger, we find that all of…

• The day the coffee machine exploded

  oldnewthing

  5 Nov 2009 | 7:00 am

  Some time ago, Microsoft began installing Starbucks coffee makers in the kitchens, and caffeine addicts waited anxiously for the machines to reach their building. Or at least that's what happened on the main Redmond campus. But what about the satellite offices? I'm told that each satellite office qualified for an iCup machine when the number of employees at the office reached some magic value. One of my colleagues who works at the office in New York City told me that they eagerly awaited the arrival of the machine when they learned that they reached that threshold. The long-anticipated day…

• In the product end game, every change carries significant risk

  oldnewthing

  4 Nov 2009 | 7:00 am

  One of the things I mentioned in my talk the other week comparing school with Microsoft is that in school, as the deadline approaches, the work becomes increasingly frantic. On the other hand, in commercial software, as the deadline approaches, the rate of change slows down, because the risk of regression outweighs the benefit of the fix. A colleague of mine offered up this example from Windows 3.1: To fix a bug in GDI, the developers made a very simple fix. It consisted of setting a global flag when a condition was detected and checking the flag in another place in the code and…

• Good advice comes with a rationale so you can tell when it becomes bad advice

  oldnewthing

  4 Nov 2009 | 7:00 am

  A customer asked for guidance in software design: Is there an issue with creating and using COM objects from a UI thread which was initialized as STA? I have heard that it is a best practice to create and use COM objects on a background thread which is MTA. I would like to have some more information as to why. Any help? (I still have trouble with the phrase best practice, especially when it is combined with the indefinite article: a best practice. It's like asking "Where is a tallest building?") Good advice comes with a rationale so you can tell when it becomes bad advice. If you don't…

• When asked to choose among multiple options, the politician will pick all of them

  oldnewthing

  3 Nov 2009 | 7:00 am

  During the run-up to a local election some time ago, the newspaper posed the same set of questions to each of the candidates and published the responses in a grid format so the readers could easily compare them. The candidates agreed on some issues, had opposing positions on others, but the question whose answers struck me was one of the form "If budget cuts forced you to eliminate one of the following four programs, which would you cut?" Candidate 1: "I have no intention of letting our budget get into a situation in which this would become an issue. All of these programs are very important…

• 
  Lambda

• State of the art C compiler optimization tricks

  6 Nov 2009 | 11:29 am

  A survey about state of the art C compiler optimization tricks, Felix von Leitner, Linux Kongress 2009. The introduction and the conclusion is quite well put: Optimizing == important. But often: Readable code == more important Learn what your compiler does Then let the compiler do it. If you do an optimization, test it on real world data. If it’s not drastically faster but makes the code less readable: undo it. That's certainly something that I agree with 110%. And really, that's why a good compilers course is so important, even if the vast majority of students never write a compiler…

• John Hughes on Erlang and Haskell

  6 Nov 2009 | 8:29 am

  John Hughes talks about his experience with Erlang vs. Haskell in an InfoQ Interview. While the discussions about strict vs lazy, pure vs side effecting, and dynamic vs static typing are interesting he raises a good question for the LtU crowd at the end: I think functional programming is a very interesting concept for the future and for the present indeed. One of the things I do wonder about though, is when I got interested in the field, the mainstream was probably Fortran and COBOL and even C was fairly new at that time. The functional programming pioneers spoke of an order of magnitude…

• Announcing a Fortress blog

  5 Nov 2009 | 1:50 pm

  Since other posters at LtU have taken an interest in the Fortress programming language in the past, I thought I'd mention that the Fortress team at Sun Labs has started a blog, to post a series of announcements and news items about Fortress. Our goal is to let people know about ongoing technical discussions and decisions, as well as the current status of the implementation. We will also post interesting examples of Fortress code. We hope to put up new posts at least weekly. So far we have four posts. The first and fourth posts discuss the new wiki markup for tables and images for use in…

• The Origins of APL

  5 Nov 2009 | 10:02 am

  1974 talk show style interview with the original developers of APL; complete with plaid jackets and a smoking host. The Origins of APL Video I've never used APL but I found the talk to be very interesting. They talk about how APL come about, its evolution and the character set. Worth watching.

• On Understanding Data Abstraction, Revisited

  2 Nov 2009 | 7:48 am

  One of the themes of Barbara Liskov's Turing Award lectue ("CS History 101") was that nobody has invented a better programming concept than abstract data types. William Cook wrote a paper for OOPSLA '09 that looks at how well PLT'ers understand their own vocabulary, in particular abstract data types and concepts that on the syntactical surface blend to all seem like ADTs. The paper is On Understanding Data Abstraction, Revisited. In 1985 Luca Cardelli and Peter Wegner, my advisor, published an ACM Computing Surveys paper called “On understanding types, data abstraction, and polymorphism”.

• 
  cssplay.co.uk

• A dropdown menu with current page override.

  Stu Nicholls

  1 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm

  A dropdown menu with current page styling and the ability to override the current page style when hovering other items.

• A CSS image map menu.

  Stu Nicholls

  31 Oct 2009 | 5:00 pm

  A CSS dropdown menu using an image map for the top level items with a rollover state, using just two images.

• A vertical slide with current page override.

  Stu Nicholls

  28 Oct 2009 | 5:00 pm

  A vertical sliding menu with current page styling and the ability to override the current page style when hovering other items.

• A dropdown menu in shades of grey and black.

  Stu Nicholls

  22 Oct 2009 | 5:00 pm

  A dropdown menu with top level centered and sub menus dynamic widths to fit the longest text, and all in shades of grey and black.

• TTF fonts for web pages

  Stu Nicholls

  19 Oct 2009 | 5:00 pm

  It is now possible to use ttf fonts in your web pages. There are now 5 browsers that support @font-face

• 
  Coding Horror

• Preserving Our Digital Pre-History

  Jeff Atwood

  5 Nov 2009 | 4:33 am

  I've spent a significant part of my life online. Not just on the internet, I mean, but on modems and early, primitive online communities. Today's internet is everything we couldn't have possibly dared to imagine twenty-five years ago, but there is a real risk of these early, tentative digital artifacts -- and for some, the beginnings of our Hacker Odyssey -- being lost forever in the relentless deluge of online progress. Sure, every single thing that happened in 2004 is documented exhaustively online. But 1994? 1984? Not so much. That's where Jason Scott comes in. You may know Jason Scott…

• Stack Overflow Careers: Amplifying Your Awesome

  Jeff Atwood

  3 Nov 2009 | 1:07 am

  That Stack Overflow thing we launched a year ago? It's been going pretty well so far. Of course, everyone knows you could code Stack Overflow in a long weekend. It's trivial. Assembling a worldwide community of smart, engaged software developers? That's a whole different ball of wax. Stack Overflow is a site by programmers, for programmers; it's only as good as the programmers who choose to participate. Stack Overflow isn't about me. Or anybody else on the Stack Overflow team for that matter. Stack Overflow is you. This is the scary part, the great leap of faith that Stack Overflow is…

• Revisiting "The Fold"

  Jeff Atwood

  26 Oct 2009 | 4:25 pm

  After I posted my blog entry on Treating User Myopia I got a lot of advice. Some useful, some not so useful. But the one bit of advice I hadn't anticipated was that we were not making good use of the area "above the fold". This surprised me. Does the fold still matter? The fold refers to the border at the bottom of the browser window at the user's default screen resolution. Like so: Way back in the dark ages of 1996, it was commonly thought that users didn't know how to scroll a web page. On the Web, the inverted pyramid becomes even more important since we know from several user studies that…

• Treating User Myopia

  Jeff Atwood

  23 Oct 2009 | 12:59 am

  I try not to talk too much about the trilogy here, because there's a whole other blog for that stuff. But some of the lessons I've learned in the last year while working on them really put into bold relief some of my earlier blog entries on usability and user behavior. One entry in particular that I keep coming back to is Teaching Users to Read. That was specific to dialog boxes, which not only stop the proceedings with idiocy, but are their own delightful brand of user interface poison. Fortunately, you don't see dialogs in web apps much, but this sort of modal dialog lunacy is, sadly,…

• The Interview With The Programmer

  Jeff Atwood

  18 Oct 2009 | 11:00 pm

  If the internet has perfected anything, it's the art of the crappy, phoned-in, half-assed email "interview". For all those who have bemoaned the often pathetic state of internet journalism, when it comes to interviews, you're largely correct. The purpose of most of these interviews is quick and dirty content filler with semi-famous folk spouting off whatever random thoughts they happen to have in their head at that exact moment. The Nixon Interviews, it ain't. That's why I'm normally not a huge fan of interview books, because interviews take an enormous amount of time and an enormous amount…

• 
  ASP.NET News

• Five New Videos on ASP.NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010!

  4 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pm

  Microsoft's Joe Stagner kicks off his series of ASP.NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010 "Quick Hits" videos. This series of short videos explains the new features of ASP.NET 4 and VS2010.

• Updated Webcasts

  1 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pm

  Register for an upcoming webcast, or watch our expanded list of archived webcasts, to hear directly from the product team and industry experts on current and upcoming technologies.

• Learn More about VS2010 and .NET 4 with Scott Guthrie's Continuing Blog Series

  29 Oct 2009 | 10:00 pm

  ScottGu continues his blog series on ASP.NET 4, covering WPF 4 and Add Reference Dialog Improvements.

• New Video on Protecting Your ASP.NET Application from SQL Injection Vulnerabilities

  28 Oct 2009 | 10:00 pm

  Microsoft’s Joe Stagner explains how SQL Injection attacks can happen, what a bad guy can do with them, and how to protect your ASP.NET application from SQL Injection vulnerabilities.

• Meet Scott Guthrie and the ASP.NET team at the ASP.NET Connections Conference in Las Vegas

  27 Oct 2009 | 10:00 pm

  Join us for a technical question and answer session with Scott Guthrie and members of the ASP.NET team on November 10th 2009 from 6:15 PM - 8:15PM at the ASP.NET Connections conference in Las Vegas. This is your chance to meet face to face with the people working on ASP.NET, give feedback and receive guidance. Attendance is limited so be there early and ask for details at the registration desk. We will have pizza and beverages.

• 
  Martin Fowler's Bliki

• DslBookRoadmap

  Martin Fowler

  I've hit an important milestone in the development of my DSL book, so thought it was time for an update. That milestone is that I have what I refer to as the First Review Draft. This is a reasonably coherent draft of the whole book that's suitable for technical review by a panel of sharp edged reviewers. As I write this I'm preparing this to go out to them.There's still a fair bit to go. They have to have time to mull on this, I have to then deal with their comments. I usually go then for a second round of reviews. One difference with that second round is that at that point, we'll probably…

• TechnicalDebtQuadrant

  Martin Fowler

  There's been a few posts over the last couple of months about TechnicalDebt that's raised the question of what kinds of design flaws should or shouldn't be classified as Technical Debt. A good example of this is Uncle Bob's post saying a mess is not a debt. His argument is that messy code, produced by people who are ignorant of good design practices, shouldn't be a debt. Technical Debt should be reserved for cases when people have made a considered decision to adopt a design strategy that isn't sustainable in the longer term, but yields a short term benefit, such as making a release. The…

• FeatureBranch

  Martin Fowler

  With the rise of Distributed Version Control Systems (DVCS) such as git and Mercurial, I've seen more conversations about strategies for branching and merging and how they fit in with Continuous Integration (CI). There's a bit of confusion here, particularly on the practice of feature branching and how it fits in with CI. Simple (isolated) Feature Branch The basic idea of a feature branch is that when you start work on a feature (or story if you prefer that term) you take a branch of the repository to work on that feature. In a DVCS, you'll do this in your personal repository, but the same…

• UpcomingTalks

  Martin Fowler

  Summer is coming to a close, and there's a bunch of conferences coming up in the next few months..Before the summer does end, I'll be going to Agile 2009 in Chicago. I'm not speaking at the conference, but I will be hanging around the corridors and helping host some ThoughtWorks activities. We've long had an office in Chicago and we have a lot of speakers at the conference.In October I'll be in Europe and as usual at this time of year I'll be at JAOO. Again Rebecca Parsons and Neal Ford will be joining me for our all-day DSL tutorial. We've worked a bit on rejigging it as my book gets more…

• DigitalSLR

  Martin Fowler

  Like many geeks I'm into photography. We geeks like photography because it provides the veneer of an artistic endeavor while allowing us to indulge in lots of technical details and spend money on expensive toys. A friend recently asked about my camera buying decisions, a question that prompted me to write them down. I got my first digital SLR a year ago. Before that I had owned a film SLR for many years, but started using digital cameras around 2000. I found the convenience of digital to be compelling and stopped using the film camera. I toyed with getting a digital SLR in 2004, but instead…

• 
  Articles, Opinions & Lab - MIX Online

• When Projects Fall Apart

  Thomas Lewis

  6 Nov 2009 | 2:20 pm

  It’s rare to find an organization that has not had a project stall, flail, or completely fall apart. By the time you find your project in this position (and are willing to accept it), you’re typically already “in the weeds” or “bailing water out of the boat with a bucket”. I’ll admit that this has happened to me. It happens to all of us. When you find yourself in this position, what should you do? Or, more importantly, what shouldn’t you do? Don’t Yank the Steering Wheel Don’t go into extreme course correction mode. If you had a plan, believe in the plan. It’s easy to…

• Calculating Risk

  Hans Hugli

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:58 am

  Over the course of the past year, the MIX Online team has taken some great risks designing and developing our labs. Each lab requires months of effort, and we occasionally have to placate our legal department or internal influencers to do things that some consider controversial. Not all of our labs pan out. I’ve personally worked on two labs that never saw the light of the day. It's truly frustrating when this happens, when the risk does not pay off. Back to the drawing board. On the other hand, it's extremely rewarding when we successfully launch a new lab. Our biggest challenge is gauging…

• Who gives a “gosh-darn”?

  Tim Aidlin

  3 Nov 2009 | 10:00 am

  Being able to see, collect, and analyze a wide spectrum of data concerning your brand, event, or website is very useful. Increasingly, social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, & Channel 9 make gathering this information—and keeping in touch with our audience in general—easy. These same tools make it extremely easy for our audience to keep in touch with us. At conferences, for example, we can stream live content that shows what other attendees are thinking & doing back to the audience. News stations do this all the time, displaying live Twitter feeds of certain words marked with…

• To Minify or Not To Minify

  Karsten Januszewski

  30 Oct 2009 | 11:11 am

  Back when we were about to ship Oomph2, I found myself ranting about having to minify the oomph.js script.  Minifying was this annoying, non-automated step in the build process, and it caused me grief—just when we thought we were ready to ship and I'd minified what I thought was the final build, a bug would pop up. I'd have to start all over. Additionally irksome was the fact that it was impossible to debug or step through bugs that manifested in the minified script (sidenote: I’m a very happy user of the IE 8 Javascript debugging tools, as well as the Visual Studio Javascript…

• Take Me To Your Leader

  Nishant Kothary

  28 Oct 2009 | 4:51 pm

  It seems like some projects are just destined to fail. No matter what we try — add more budget, assign more people, call more meetings, work longer days — it's simply impossible to steer these troubled projects down the right path. Why? In my experience, the root cause is something that we frequently discount: strong leadership. Less is More Ironically, projects always seem to fail for variety good reasons: biting off more than can be chewed, not enough time to execute, incorrect prioritization of business goals, and so on. Despite their unique origins, failing projects share one…

• 
  Yahoo! User Interface Blog

• YUI Theater — Satyen Desai: “A Widget Walkthrough”

  Eric Miraglia

  6 Nov 2009 | 12:41 pm

  Satyen Desai (@dezziness) leads development of the YUI 3 widget infrastructure, a system that is currently in beta and due for its first production-quality release in Q1 2010. At YUICONF 2009, Satyen provided a deep-dive on this emerging foundation in his session, “A Widget Walkthrough.” If you’re considering the development of YUI 3-based widgets to share on the new YUI 3 Gallery, or if you simply want to understand more deeply the inner workings of YUI 3 visual components, Satyen’s talk is a fantastic place to start. (Note: Satyen has an earlier YUI Theater session…

• YUI Theater — Chad Auld: “Introducing PHP Loader”

  Eric Miraglia

  6 Nov 2009 | 8:44 am

  Chad Auld (@chadauld) is a Yahoo! engineer best known for his work on MiaCMS and Sideline. Chad recently drove the open-source release of YUI’s PHP Loader (taking over from original developer Adam Moore [@admo]), and he came to YUICONF 2009 last week to talk about the project and provide an introduction to its core features. PHP Loader provides a generic, flexible loading mechanism for modular JavaScript/CSS projects, and while it ships with YUI 2 and YUI 3 metadata it can be used for any frontend project written in PHP. Chad’s talk gave the audience a unique opportunity to hear…

• YUI Theater — Matt Snider: “Introducing the YUI 2.8.0 Storage Utility”

  Eric Miraglia

  5 Nov 2009 | 2:48 pm

  Matt Snider is the lead fronted engineer (and employee #1) at Mint.com, the popular personal-finance site that was recently acquired by Intuit. Matt has been a longtime user of YUI at Mint, and he’s documented his own additions to YUI extensively over the years on his blog. This year, Matt deepened his work with the library by authoring a major new component: the YUI 2.8.0 Storage Utility. Storage provides an HTML 5-like API for client-side storage, using native HTML 5 engines where available and falling back to SWF and Gears as alternatives when a native engine isn’t available.

• YUI Theater — Ron Adams: “Automated Integration Testing with YUI Test, Selenium and Hudson”

  Eric Miraglia

  5 Nov 2009 | 8:49 am

  Ron Adams is a Yahoo! engineer in Southern California who has worked on a variety of Yahoo!’s media products including OMG and who now works for Yahoo! Sports. Ron has been working with colleagues in QA to automate the exercise of JavaScript unit tests, and his YUICONF 2009 session was entitled “Automated Integration Testing with YUI Test, Selenium and Hudson.” As the title suggests, he outlines the process he’s developed using YUI Test for JavaScript unit tests, Hudson as a CI/build tool for tracking and monitoring results, and Selenium as the tool to exercise the JS…

• YUI Theater — Eric Ferraiuolo: “Web App Development with YUI 3″

  Eric Miraglia

  5 Nov 2009 | 7:47 am

  Eric Ferraiuolo (@ericf) of Boston-area startup Oddnut Software made the trip to YUICONF 2009 last week to give a talk on the deployment of YUI 3-based applications in the real world. The talk presents a lot of wisdom Eric and his team have acquired since beginning to build on YUI 3 about a year ago, and it was one of the best-received talks at the conference. If the video embed below doesn’t show up correctly in your RSS reader of choice, be sure to click through to watch the high-resolution version of the video on YUI Theater; the downloadable version is much smaller, optimized as it…

• 
  Ruby Inside

• Jekyll: A Ruby-Powered Static Site Generator

  Ric Roberts

  5 Nov 2009 | 1:34 pm

  Jekyll is a simple Ruby-powered static site generator, originally by Tom Preston-Werner (aka mojombo) of Github fame. It's focused around blogging, but it can be configured to generate any kind of static site. (Note: Jekyll has been around for about a year - Tom originally blogged about it in November last year, so apologies if this is old news to some readers, but I've only recently discovered it!) Because Jekyll outputs a static site structure, it means you can host your blog (or site) from anywhere that you can serve static HTML, simply by using your favourite web server (e.g. Apache). As…

• Thinking Functionally In Ruby – A Great Presentation by Tom Stuart

  Peter Cooper

  3 Nov 2009 | 6:04 am

  Thinking Functionally in Ruby is a talk that British Ruby developer Tom Stuart gave at a recent London Ruby Users Group meeting. In it he covers what functional programming is, why it's a "pretty neat idea," and how to adopt functional programming principles in Ruby. Skills Matter took a video of the entire 47 minute presentation (it's embedded on the right hand side of that page - Flash required.. just been told it might be limited to UK visitors only, if so get the original MP4 file) but there's also a 110 page PDF (1.5MB download) you should have to hand too (with Tom's slides). I don't…

• Riot: for fast, expressive and focused unit tests

  Ric Roberts

  31 Oct 2009 | 9:57 am

  Riot is a new Ruby test framework by Justin Knowlden that focuses on faster testing. Justin was frustrated with his slow running test suites, despite employing techniques such as using factories, mocks and avoiding database access. He realized that a slow-running suite makes one reluctant to run it or expand it - not good. With Riot, each test consists of a block which forms a single assertion on the topic of the test, keeping the tests focused. Tests run in a specific context, and the setup code is only run once per context, further contributing to the speed of your test suite, and unlike…

• Heroku Gets Add-Ons: Serious Ruby Webapp Hosting Made Easy

  Peter Cooper

  28 Oct 2009 | 8:33 am

  Heroku is a Ruby webapp hosting service that we first mentioned about two years ago. It started off as an online IDE of sorts, but is now a complete cloud platform for running Ruby webapps. You can develop locally and then, with a single command, deploy your app to their metered service. Well, Heroku got in touch with me last week to talk about their new "Add-Ons" feature and they've really kicked things up a notch for people wanting to quickly roll out webapps online. Till now, Heroku has provided basic functionality on a semi-metered basis. You pay a monthly fee for a basic rate of service…

• Gemcutter Is The New Official Default RubyGem Host

  Peter Cooper

  26 Oct 2009 | 4:48 pm

  Just two months ago we posted about Gemcutter, a new RubyGem hosting repository that, we said, was "taking aim at RubyForge and GitHub." It only took six weeks for GitHub to give up on building gems and to start recommending Gemcutter instead. Today, RubyForge is toppled also. Gemcutter developer Nick Quaranto has announced that Ruby Central has given the thumbs up to replacing http://gems.rubyforge.org/ with http://rubygems.org/ (the new Gemcutter URL) as the default gem host in RubyGems. The transition from RubyForge to Gemcutter/RubyGems.org isn't an overnight deal and gem publishing from…

• 
  Channel 9

• Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) and Software Security Today

  Charles

  6 Nov 2009 | 1:49 pm

  The Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) team recently released two new security tools, BinScope Binary Analyzer and MiniFuzz File Fuzzer, to help you write more secure code. Jeremy Dallman, Michael Howard, and Ivan Medvedev created these tools so we decided to pay them a visit to chat about what these tools do and why they matter. Of course, it's been way too long since Michael Howard has preached to us from his security soapbox so we just had to get him talking about the general state of software security today and where it's going! For the Microsoft SDL team, SDL is as much a…

• Windows Identity Foundation RC is here!

  Vittorio Bertocci

  6 Nov 2009 | 10:05 am

  The release candidate of Windows Identity Foundation is here! Chock-full of improvements driven by YOUR feedback, WIF RC gives a very good idea of how the final release will look like. Vittorio went to visit Sidd, Govind and Sesha to learn about the new features and explore the rationale behind some of them. From a comprehensive list of new features to deep dives in their favourite scenarios, the guys tell it all. Tune in! URL references: WIF RC Announcement Download the Windows Identity Foundation RC The Identity key topic on Channel 9

• Microsoft Help Viewer - New Help System in Visual Studio 2010

  Kathleen McGrath

  5 Nov 2009 | 4:25 pm

  In this video, Ryan Linton, a Senior Program Manager on the Library Experience Team, describes the new Help system in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2.  Kathleen McGrath Visual Studio User Education http://blogs.msdn.com/kathleen Visual Studio and .NET Framework Content Survey

• Life at Microsoft: The truth revealed...again!

  tina10

  5 Nov 2009 | 12:54 pm

  False rumors about life at Microsoft abound, like "drinking the juice" or sleeping at our desks; even that everybody watches Battlestar Galactica. Truth is: only most of us watch it. In a continued effort to debunk the rumors once and for all, I present to you - Life at Microsoft Episode 2.   If you missed the first episode, go check it out!

• Announcing Channel 9’s first live broadcast - This Week on C9 this Friday!

  Dan Fernandez

  5 Nov 2009 | 10:03 am

  Updated: Watch us live at http://live.ch9.ms today at 3:00 PM PST! Mark your calendars, on Friday,  November 6th at 3:00PM Pacific Standard Time, Channel 9 will host its first live broadcast for This Week on Channel 9! We’ll have a special Web page setup for our live streaming player and you’ll be able to ask us questions in real-time via Twitter. Start following @ch9live on Twitter for more information. FAQ: Q: Do I need anything special to watch the live stream? A: You just need Silverlight installed. Q: How do I watch the live stream? A: We’ll be posting the URL Friday morning PST?

• 
  Paul Graham: Essays

• What Startups Are Really Like

• Persuade xor Discover

• Post-Medium Publishing

• The List of N Things

• The Anatomy of Determination

• 
  CodePlex

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, November 06, 2009

  6 Nov 2009 | 11:48 am

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, November 06, 2009New ProjectsAjax Control Toolkit 30930 for Umbraco: This is a modified version of the Ajax Control Toolkit version 30930 for Umbraco, to use next to Umbraco's ACT version.Autenticar no OpenLDAP utilizando pGIna: Criar um plugin para o pGina que permite a autenticação em um servidor LDAP. Após feita essa autenticação, verifica-se qual o grupo o usuário perte...BobCashManagement: A slightly improved Mono port of JGnash, written in C#Deneme proje: Deneme Amaçlı projeDragon MVC: A rapid development…

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 05, 2009

  5 Nov 2009 | 10:11 pm

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 05, 2009New ProjectsAutumn Game Engine: Autumn is a game engine for hobbyists to professional game developers to simplify development of XNA games across multiple platforms. It is develop...AzMan API: AzMan API is a .Net library to ease the pain of working with Microsoft AzMan.Battlegrounds: XNA duel.Database Schema discovery API for MS SQL, Oracle and MySQL.: Database Schema discovery API for MS SQL, Oracle and MySQL. This API is for anyone who need schema information in your appllications. This API ...Ext2 File System Simulator: File…

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 05, 2009

  5 Nov 2009 | 12:20 pm

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 05, 2009New ProjectsAutumn Game Engine: Autumn is a game engine for hobbyists to professional game developers to simplify development of XNA games across multiple platforms. It is develop...AzMan API: AzMan API is a .Net library to ease the pain of working with Microsoft AzMan.Battlegrounds: XNA duel.Database Schema discovery API for MS SQL, Oracle and MySQL.: Database Schema discovery API for MS SQL, Oracle and MySQL. This API is for anyone who need schema information in your appllications. This AP...Ext2 File System…

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, November 04, 2009

  4 Nov 2009 | 12:20 pm

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, November 04, 2009New ProjectsASP.NET Exception Reporter (based on ELMAH): ASP.NET Exception Reporter (based on ELMAH) is pluggable application-wide error logging facility. Plug it in to your existing webapps, webservices,...Biofuels Feedstock Database Management System: This is a shared code development space for the Idaho National Laboratory and Idaho State University Geospatial Software Lab Biofuels Feedstock Dat...Facebook Membership Provider: Facebook Membership ProviderFluent NHibernate samples: Visual Studio sample solution…

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, November 03, 2009

  3 Nov 2009 | 12:19 pm

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, November 03, 2009New ProjectsASP.NET Rewrite Engine: AspNetRewriteEngine is an http module which allows complex SEO and custom url rewriting / routing similar to Apache Web Server's mod_rewrite (upon ...Centinel: .NET Framework for building data driven applications. Still under development :-(Circo.SqlDoctor: Circo.SqlDoctorClover IM: Clover IM must be a powerfull ICQ messanger. It's developing in C# and using Windows Presentation Foudation. To use Oscar protocol it use own libra...ContactServer:…

• 
  Planet MySQL

• New script speeds up Kontrollbase login by 50%

  Matt Reid

  6 Nov 2009 | 5:13 pm

  There’s a new script in kontrolbase that speeds up the login process by up to 50%. I highly recommend every user to upgrade to the latest version of the svn release. Otherwise you can grab the file here: http://code.google.com/p/kontrollbase/source/browse/trunk/bin/kontroll-query_cache_preload.pl Read more about the script and how it works here: http://kontrollsoft.com/forum/kontrollbase-issues-and-solutions/query-cache-preload-script-speeds-up-login-by-50#p22 PlanetMySQL Voting: Vote UP / Vote DOWN

• My MySQL Tool Chest

  Gerardo Narvaja

  6 Nov 2009 | 3:34 pm

  Every time I need to install or reconfigure a new workstation, I review the set of tools I use. It's an opportunity to refresh the list, reconsider the usefulness of old tools and review new ones. During my first week at Open Market I got one of these opportunities. Here is my short list of free (as in 'beer') OSS tools and why they have a place in my tool chest.Testing EnvironmentsVirtual BoxOf all the Virtual Machines out there, I consider Virtual Box to be the easiest to use. Since I first looking into it while I was still working at Sun/MySQL, this package has been improved constantly.

• FLIFO scheduling for InnoDB

  Mark Callaghan

  6 Nov 2009 | 1:19 pm

  At the end of this note I describe how InnoDB can be much faster (2.5X) for high-concurrency workloads. However, what we really did is improve the code to not get 2.5X slower. InnoDB uses innodb_thread_concurrency to limit the number of threads that run concurrently. Enforcement of this limit is imprecise to improve performance. By imprecise, I mean that there are usually fewer than innodb_thread_concurrency threads running within InnoDB even when there are many threads ready, willing and able to run there. In what follows assume that there is a 1:1 mapping between thread, session and…

• Oracle Express Edition first steps for MySQL DBAs

  Dave Stokes

  6 Nov 2009 | 11:01 am

  I have had a few MySQL DBAs ask about how to get started learning Oracle. I will admit that it has been on my to-do list for quite a while1. It never hurts to know more than one database system and a great deal of DBA help wanted ads mention Oracle. Someone once said that you must make sure your capabilities exceed your limitations2 and recently I have been feeling limited when others have started to talk about Oracle capabilities.So what does it take for a MySQL DBA to get their hands on their own Oracle instance? I used my Ubuntu box to go to Oracle's web site to get the free Oracle XE…

• Log Buffer #168: a Carnival of the Vanities for DBAs

  Dave Edwards

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:47 am

  This is the 168th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs. Let’s give the wheel a spin and see who comes first . . .  MySQL Brian “Krow” Aker has something to say about Drizzle, InfiniDB, and column-oriented storage: “I have been asked a number of times ‘do you think there is a need for a column oriented database in the open source world?’ The answer has been yes!  . . .  I was very happy to see Calpont do their release of Infinidb last week.” Vadim of the MySQL Performance Blog said,…

• 
  MySQL Performance Blog

• Air traffic queries in MyISAM and Tokutek (TokuDB)

  Vadim

  5 Nov 2009 | 10:21 pm

  This is next post in series Analyzing air traffic performance with InfoBright and MonetDB Air traffic queries in LucidDB Air traffic queries in InfiniDB: early alpha Let me explain the reason of choosing these engines. After initial three posts I am often asked "What is baseline ? Can we compare results with standard MySQL engines ?". So there come MyISAM to consider it as base point to see how column-oriented-analytic engines are better here. However, take into account, that for MyISAM we need to choose proper indexes to execute queries effectively, and there is pain coming with indexes: -…

• New developers training course is almost ready

  Morgan Tocker

  5 Nov 2009 | 5:56 pm

  We've been busy expanding our training curriculum to include training for developers building applications with MySQL.  We have reached the point where we're ready for a pilot teach - and it brings me great pleasure to announce that we're opening it up for blog readers to attend, free of charge. The details: San Francisco 4th December 9:30AM - 5PM Spaces are limited, so to give everyone a fair chance we're delaying registration to open at noon tomorrow (Friday) Pacific Time. It's strictly first in first served, so be quick!  The registration link is here. Entry posted by Morgan Tocker | One…

• InnoDB: look after fragmentation

  Vadim

  5 Nov 2009 | 11:01 am

  One problem made me puzzled for couple hours, but it was really interesting to figure out what's going on. So let me introduce problem at first. The table is PLAIN TEXT CODE: CREATE TABLE `c` (   `tracker_id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,   `username` char(20) character set latin1 collate latin1_bin NOT NULL,   `time_id` date NOT NULL,   `block_id` int(10) unsigned default NULL,   PRIMARY KEY  (`tracker_id`,`username`,`time_id`),   KEY `block_id` (`block_id`) ) ENGINE=InnoDB Table has 11864696 rows and takes…

• Air traffic queries in InfiniDB: early alpha

  Vadim

  2 Nov 2009 | 1:29 pm

  As Calpont announced availability of InfiniDB I surely couldn't miss a chance to compare it with previously tested databases in the same environment. See my previous posts on this topic: Analyzing air traffic performance with InfoBright and MonetDB Air traffic queries in LucidDB I could not run all queries against InfiniDB and I met some hiccups during my experiment, so it was less plain experience than with other databases. So let's go by the same steps: Load data InfiniDB supports MySQL's LOAD DATA statement and it's own colxml / cpimport utilities. As LOAD DATA is more familiar for me, I…

• Speaking at the LA MySQL Meetup – 18th November

  Morgan Tocker

  1 Nov 2009 | 9:35 am

  A recent photo from Highload.ru I said in my last post, that we're interested in speaking at MySQL meetups, and I'm happy to say that the Los Angeles MySQL Meetup has taken us up on the offer. On November 18th, I'll be giving an introductory talk on InnoDB/XtraDB Performance Optimization.  I will be the second speaker, with Carl Gelbart first speaking on Infobright. What brings me to LA?  On the same day (18th Nov) I'll be teaching a one day class on Performance Optimization for MySQL with InnoDB and XtraDB.  If you haven't signed up yet - spaces are still available. Entry posted by Morgan…

• 
  Polymath Programmer

• Upgraded: Reverse Polish Notation with C#

  Vincent

  5 Nov 2009 | 12:00 am

  I wrote a reverse polish notation tutorial for Dream In Code almost 2 years ago (wow that’s a long time ago!). The code only parsed for PI, E, numbers, the basic operators (plus, minus, multiply, divide), and the 3 basic trigonometric functions sine, cosine and tangent. I’ve added more functions to it, and you can download the class here: ReversePolishNotation.cs The new functions are Absolute function Arc sine (asin, inverse sine function) Arc cosine (acos, inverse cosine function) Arc tangent (atan, inverse tangent function) Hyperbolic sine (sinh) Hyperbolic cosine (cosh)…

• Why are signals from passive optical networks split into 32?

  Vincent

  2 Nov 2009 | 12:00 am

  I attended a course on fibre technology recently. The presenter was Dr. Jeffrey Bannister from Orbitage. He was talking about fibre optics being a relatively old technology, and is now being used as a means of transporting the vast amounts of information that’s the Internet. Remember the earthquakes near Taiwan, which halted Internet traffic in Asia? There’s an interesting point he made, that there are only 4 of these hair-thin optical fibres supporting the Asian Internet traffic. And if I remember correctly, these optical fibres run in between Vietnam and Philippines, to Taiwan,…

• The math behind 360 degree fisheye to landscape conversion

  Vincent

  29 Oct 2009 | 1:00 am

  I wrote an article to convert a 360 degree fisheye image to a landscape view some time ago. I also realised I didn’t explain the math very much, mainly because I thought it’s fairly obvious. On hindsight, it doesn’t seem obvious. My apologies. Commenter Eric pointed out a math technique called linear fractional transformation. It’s basically a function that can map lines and circles to lines or circles. In theory, it seems applicable to our problem. When I tried working out the solution, I failed. 2 possible reasons: my math sucks, or the technique isn’t…

• The leap year 1900 “bug” in Excel

  Vincent

  26 Oct 2009 | 2:00 am

  No it’s not really a bug in Microsoft Excel. What happens is that Excel will accept 29 Feb 1900 as a valid date. “Wait, the year 1900 is not a leap year. 29 Feb 1900 is invalid!” Yes, I agree. I wrote something about leap years before. From what I understand, it’s a historical issue, that There are two kinds of Excel worksheets: those where the epoch for dates is 1/1/1900 (with a leap-year bug deliberately created for 1-2-3 compatibility that is too boring to describe here), and those where the epoch for dates is 1/1/1904. [emphasis mine] The “1-2-3″ refers…

• Figuring out who you are

  Vincent

  23 Oct 2009 | 9:49 am

  You have to watch this video first. It’ll be one of the most thought-provoking 40 minutes of your life: Makebelieve Help, Old Butchers, and Figuring Out Who You Are (For Now) from Merlin Mann on Vimeo. I’m scared. I’m deathly afraid actually. Remember the ebook I’m writing, “Discipline and Deflection”? Well, I started off thinking, “I want to help people. I seem to have a knack for handling many small tasks, answering emails, replying to user queries, generating ad-hoc reports from databases. Stuff like that. And I still manage to write code, roll the…

• 
  James Gosling: on the Java Road

• Java Store β: payment and a new client

  jag

  3 Nov 2009 | 4:21 pm

  Put an accountant, a lawyer, an MBA and a software engineer together into a room... Sounds like the lead-in to a bad joke, but it's the exercise that the Java Store team has been living through for the past several months. At the PayPal conference today Eric Klein did an announcement and demo of the next phase in the Java Store's development. We've been working with PayPal on this for some time, using their new PayPal X platform. It always amazes me how complex it is to deal with all the details of global finance. And even so, the store today only handles US issues. But the framework is in…

• The Network Is

  jag

  29 Oct 2009 | 9:27 am

  Yet Another Happy Birthday Intertubes!! Today marks 40 years of the internet, although there's some debate as to the actual date. I consider myself a latecomer: I didn't get my first real internet email address until 1977, C410JG40@CMUA. I was "jag" on various Unix systems before then, but it wasn't until 1977 that the ARPAnet and email really took over my life. I soon realized that the only real-world friendships I kept up with were folks that I could send email to. I disappeared from my brother and sister's lives until they got email addresses 20 years later. Of course now it's gotten to…

• JavaCard 3 hits the streets!

  jag

  26 Oct 2009 | 2:14 pm

  The JavaCard team have been cranking away. Development on the 3.0 version is finally (almost) finished, and it's pretty amazing. Java Card 3 is available in two Editions. Classic Edition This is the same as Java Card 2 with some enhancements/bug fixes. It is almost 10 years young and is the most popular platform for the SIM and ID markets. Connected Edition This is the next generation Java Card technology: JDK6 Compatible VM: Except for floats, it support class file version 50. Full Java Language support: Java Card 2 has restrictions on the language itself. But JC3 has no limits. You can use…

• Map browser on kenai

  jag

  20 Oct 2009 | 12:03 pm

  I ripped the little demo map browser component out of my Oracle OpenWorld slides and moved it to kenai as a new project called OSMBrowser. Not very polished, more of a starting point for someone motivated to play :-) Thanks to the crew at the Open Street Map project for a nice database and tile server. A Thing of Beauty. Update: I fixed the busted .jnlp file, so it can be run.

• My slides from Oracle Openworld

  jag

  16 Oct 2009 | 10:21 am

  Several folks have asked for copies of my slides from Oracle Openworld. Unfortunately, there's no printable form of them, since I did them as a JavaFX app. You'll find them at http://fxslideshowtest.kenai.com which will launch the app (with all it's rather large images) via JNLP. If you're curious about the sources, they're on kenai. The code is pretty ugly: I just slapped it together. I'm not proud :-) The code for the map browsing component is in there too. It uses the tile server from openstreetmap.org (Click and drag with the mouse to move, scroll wheel to zoom). I kinda like the map…

• 
  It's Just a Bunch of Stuff That Happens

• Fresh Start

  Eric Burke

  2 Nov 2009 | 10:18 am

  Sony gives you the option to remove crapware from certain new Windows 7 PCs. They call it their “Fresh Start” option, as shown here: Problems: A crapware-free PC should be the DEFAULT selection, not an easily missed opt-out selection Fresh Start is only available for Win 7 Professional This leaves me with a very uneasy feeling about Sony. If I were to buy a laptop from them, it would be Win 7 Home Premium. But since Fresh Start is not available with Home Premium, what kind of crap is pre-loaded?

• Great DROID Review

  Eric Burke

  31 Oct 2009 | 9:59 pm

  I thoroughly enjoyed Smartphone Showdown: iPhone 3GS vs Motorola Droid. It’s a very well-written, objective comparison between two great phones.

• Magic Mouse

  Eric Burke

  31 Oct 2009 | 8:12 pm

  A family member got a Magic Mouse so I had some time to play around with it. Here are my thoughts: Step 1 – Go to System Preferences and enable right click. Duh. Left and right click work perfectly, unlike the Mighty Mouse which I never could get to work reliably. You won’t mis-click with the new mouse. There are no buttons, but the whole mouse does physically move and click, so it feels right. The twoone-finger vertical swipe to scroll vertically works well. I do not like the two-finger horizontal swipe gesture. This makes your browser go back and forward. The problem is, the…

• Death by Spoon

  Eric Burke

  31 Oct 2009 | 8:02 pm

  I love the Internet.

• FAIL Manifesto

  Eric Burke

  30 Oct 2009 | 5:39 am

  Finally, a manifesto I can get behind.

• 
  Pushing Pixels

• One tweet at a time: @brownbear @brownbear #whatdoyousee

  Kirill Grouchnikov

  6 Nov 2009 | 8:52 pm

  brownbear i see a @redbird looking at me. @redbird, @redbird, #whatdoyousee? about 2 hours ago from web redbird i see a @yellowduck looking at me. @yellowduck, @yellowduck, #whatdoyousee? about 2 hours ago from twitterfeed yellowduck i see a @bluehorse looking at me. @bluehorse, @bluehorse, #whatdoyousee? about 2 hours ago from twitterfeed bluehorse i see a @greenfrog looking at me. @greenfrog, @greenfrog, #whatdoyousee? about 2 hours ago from Tweetie greenfrog i see a @purplecat looking at me. @purplecat, @purplecat, #whatdoyousee? about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck purplecat i see a @whitedog…

• Drinking From The Firehose – Design Inspiration October 2009

  Kirill Grouchnikov

  5 Nov 2009 | 8:56 am

  Image by margolove Every month this series is tracking the latest design trends and collecting the best examples of modern web designs. Here is the list for October 2009 with almost 2000 links from 58 aggregator posts: 26 Dark Website Designs That Work Well from Web Design Tutorials 50 of the Best Movie Websites from CreativityDen 45+ Inspiring Examples of Vintage in Web Design from Naldz Graphics 17 Creative Online eCommerce Designs from Web Design Tutorials 25 Black & White Minimalistic Web Designs from Webitect 20 awesome website footer designs from CSS Orgy Design Trend Showcase:…

• Control alignment under different fonts in Substance 6.0

  Kirill Grouchnikov

  4 Nov 2009 | 9:56 pm

  After taking a deep dive into the intricacies of aligning text components, comboboxes, spinners and buttons in the latest 6.0dev drops of Substance look-and-feel, it’s time to talk about supporting different font settings. As with precise micro-design, Karsten has pioneered the Swing work on matching the desktop font settings in his JGoodies Looks collection of look-and-feels. Along with the native font rasterizer (at least on Windows Vista and its Segoe UI 12 font), this is by far the most important part in creating an application that is visually consistent with the user desktop.

• Control alignment in Substance 6.0

  Kirill Grouchnikov

  2 Nov 2009 | 9:04 pm

  Last week i have written about improving the visuals of text components, comboboxes and spinners in the 6.0dev branch of Substance look-and-feel library. Today, it’s time to talk about the micro-design of these components – aligning perceived boundaries, text baseline and other visual elements of user input controls. I have started looking into the precise micro-design around three years ago, with the main inspiration coming from JGoodies Looks library developed by Karsten Lentzsch. The micro-design looks at how the controls look like when they are placed next to each other…

• Flamingo 4.2 official release

  Kirill Grouchnikov

  2 Nov 2009 | 8:36 am

  I am excited today to announce the availability of the final release for version 4.2 of Flamingo component suite (code-named Hiolair). It is a stabilization release that adds a few minor features and fixes all known bugs. Here is the list of minor features added in release 4.2: Support for placing small command buttons in ribbon galleries Option to specify the callback for populating the default content of ribbon application menu Command buttons support no icon / no text mode Emitting full bounding box coordinates in SVG transcoder Support for changing the expand listener of ribbon bands…

• 
  No Fluff Just Stuff

• Speaking at NFJS Northern Virginia Software Symposium November 6-8, 2009

  Shashank Tiwari

  6 Nov 2009 | 2:00 pm

  This weekend, I will be speaking at the No Fluff Just Stuff Northern Virginia Software Symposium in Reston, VA. The symposium, as always, has some truly brilliant speakers from the world of Java, dynamic languages and agile software development. I have 3 sessions; all on Sunday. All my topics relate to Flex and Java integration. On Sunday morning at 9.00am I  start off with a general and broad based topic: “Flex and Java Integration“. Later that afternoon, I explore the world of “Flex and Hibernate” and the promising domain of “Collaborative real-time…

• XML verification just got easier with easyb

  Andrew Glover

  6 Nov 2009 | 11:00 am

  There’s myriad ways to validate XML these days; in fact, with Groovy, the mechanics of parsing XML with XMLSlurper couldn’t be easier! Nevertheless, from time to time, because it’s my bag, baby, I’ve found that I’ve needed an easy way to validate XML documents without having to actually parse them myself. Thus, XMLUnit has been a handy framework today as it has been for years. While XMLUnit is a hip JUnit-style framework, you can certainly leverage it outside of JUnit. What’s more, via easyb’s plug-in framework, using XMLUnit just got a lot easier!

• Nick Belaevski newest member of the JSF 2.0 Expert Group

  Max Katz

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

  As reported here, Nick Belaevski is the newest member to join JSF 2 Expert Group from Exadel. Nick is Exadel’s lead developer for RichFaces project. On the Exadel side, Nick joins Alexander Smirnov who has been a member for a long time. Congratulations, Nick!

• Consulting, SOFEA, Grails and GWT at next week's Denver JUG

  Matt Raible

  6 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

  Next Wednesday, I'll be at Denver's JUG meeting to talk about Independent Consulting and Building SOFEA Applications with Grails and GWT. The first talk will be a a panel discussion among local independent consultants, including James Goodwill, Matthew McCullough, Tim Berglund and myself. This session explores the trials and tribulations of an independent consultant. How do you find contracts? Should you setup an LLC, an S-Corp or just be a sole proprietorship? What about health insurance and benefits? Are recruiters helpful or hurtful? Learn lots of tips and tricks to get your dream job and…

• A Bit of Closure

  Alex Russell

  5 Nov 2009 | 2:00 pm

  So from time to time I’d wondered what all the brilliant DHTML hackers that Google had hired were up to. Obviously, building products. Sure. But I knew these guys. They do infrastructure, not just kludges and one-off’s. You don’t build a product like Gmail and have no significant UI infrastructure to show for it. Today they flung the doors open on Closure and it’s supporting compiler. These tools evolved together, and it shows. Closure code eschews many of the space-saving shortcuts that Dojo code employs because the compiler is so sophisticated that it can shorten…

• 
  Planet TW

• Sumeet Moghe: Put your learners on a diet - consider a pull-based learning approach

  6 Nov 2009 | 8:47 pm

  Have you ever had a time when you got slammed in the face with a huge plate of food which you just couldn't say no to? I have. Picture the above meal -- for some it might just be the tastiest thing they could imagine. For me, while I find it difficult to say no sometimes and even if I only want a little, I have to labour through the entire meal. I just got off a five hour flight to Hong Kong, and I've had a bit of an epiphany. Let me tell you the story first. This flight left Bangalore at about 2:35 AM -- a time at which I'm usually fast asleep. So what I really wanted on this flight was some…

• Patrick Kua: Fixing Notepad++ 5.5 Langs.xml

  6 Nov 2009 | 10:25 am

  I upgraded to the latest version of Notepad++ (5.5) and noticed that I sometimes get some problems with a dialogue box that pops up, looking like the picture the right stating (Load Langs.xml failed!) Having a quick look at the installation directory, it looks like a langs.xml file exists yet it has a 0KB size. I’m not sure what causes it yet (perhaps it’s if you kill the process mid-way using Task Manager) but all I did was take a copy of langs.model.xml and rename the copy as langs.xml. Fixes it all up!

• Jie Xiong: Sponsor的价值所在

  6 Nov 2009 | 6:38 am

  我：俺们SVN server装Windows上，用个32位Apache做前端，那玩意有2G内存限制… 麦：一，用Windows做SVN server。二，代码库很大。三，很多人同时访问。 麦：你在XX公司？ 知音啊～～我又内牛满面了～～介个就是Sponsor的价值亚～～

• Mark Needham: TDD: Useful when new on a project

  6 Nov 2009 | 3:57 am

  Something which I've noticed over the last few projects that I've worked on is that at the beginning when I don't know very much at all about the code base, domain and so on is that pairing with someone to TDD something seems to make it significantly easier for me to follow what's going on than other approaches I've seen. I thought that it was probably because I'm more used to that approach than any other but in Michael Feathers' description of TDD in 'Working Effectively With Legacy Code' he points out the following: One of the most valuable things about TDD is that it lets us concentrate on…

• Simon Brunning: Links for 2009-11-05 [del.icio.us]

  6 Nov 2009 | 12:00 am

  Mingle + Google Wave for Project Collaboration twategy inc At least, I *hope* it's funny... Customize MediaWiki Les Sapeurs du Congo Customise GMail offline Superb Google Dashboard Actor model Ubuntu 9.10: "unknown filesystem type 'iso9660'" Not just me then. How To Use An Apostrophe The rise of the non-veggie vegetarian

• 
  Android Developers Blog

• ADC 2 Round 2 Voting Open

  Eric Chu, Android Mobile Platform

  5 Nov 2009 | 9:15 pm

  The results from ADC 2 Round 1 are now tabulated and verified. With the top 200 applications identified, it's time to begin the final round judging. Be sure to download the ADC 2 judging application, or update your existing application, and help us select the final winners!For the final round, both users and a Google-selected panel of industry judges will provide votes to determine the final winners. Prizes will be distributed to the top 3 entrants in each of the 10 categories, and the top 3 overall entrants will receive additional prizes. Please see our reference page for full challenge…

• Bring Your Lab Coats

  Eric Chu, Android Mobile Platform

  2 Nov 2009 | 2:00 pm

  With the recent release of Android 2.0 and the growing number of available devices, we want to give developers a convenient way to test drive their apps on these new devices. We also want to make our Android advocates available to answer any questions you may have.We are pleased to announce that we will host a series of all day Android developer labs over the next month in the following cities (dates in local time):Mountain View, CA - Nov 9New York, NY - Nov 16London, UK - Nov 17Tokyo, JP - Nov 18Taipei, TW - Nov 20Due to limited space, developers who have already published an application in…

• Announcing Android 2.0 support in the SDK!

  Xavier Ducrohet, Android SDK Tech Lead

  27 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am

  I am excited to announce that the Android SDK now supports Android 2.0 (also known as Eclair).Android 2.0 brings new developer APIs for sync, Bluetooth, and a few other areas. Using the new sync, account manager and contacts APIs, you can write applications to enable users to sync their devices to various contact sources. You can also give users a faster way to communicate with others by embedding Quick Contact within your application. With the new Bluetooth API, you can now easily add peer-to-peer connectivity or gaming to your applications. To get a more complete list of the new…

• UI framework changes in Android 1.6

  Romain Guy

  23 Oct 2009 | 2:00 pm

  Android 1.6 introduces numerous enhancements and bug fixes in the UI framework. Today, I'd like to highlight three two improvements in particular.Optimized drawingThe UI toolkit introduced in Android 1.6 is aware of which views are opaque and can use this information to avoid drawing views that the user will not be able to see. Before Android 1.6, the UI toolkit would sometimes perform unnecessary operations by drawing a window background when it was obscured by a full-screen opaque view. A workaround was available to avoid this, but the technique was limited and required work on your part.

• Support for additional screen resolutions and densities in Android

  Romain Guy

  8 Oct 2009 | 6:53 pm

  You may have heard that one of the key changes introduced in Android 1.6 is support for new screen sizes. This is one of the things that has me very excited about Android 1.6 since it means Android will start becoming available on so many more devices. However, as a developer, I know this also means a bit of additional work. That's why we've spent quite a bit of time making it as easy as possible for you to update your apps to work on these new screen sizes.To date, all Android devices (such as the T-Mobile G1 and Samsung I7500, among others) have had HVGA (320x480) screens. The essential…

• 
  OpenSocial API Blog

• Announcing the Worldwide Ning Appathon Competition

  Lane LiaBraaten

  6 Nov 2009 | 8:28 am

  Let the games begin! At last night's Ning Appathon kickoff event at the Ning offices in Palo Alto, Ning started a week-long worldwide app development competition for the recently launched Ning Apps platform.WHAT: The Ning Appathon is a week-long OpenSocial development competition with prizes for both original and ported applications. Judges include Ning Chairman and Co-founder Marc Andreessen, Wired magazine Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson and Managing Director of building43 Robert Scoble.WHERE: The competition is open to participants worldwide. Visit the Ning Developer Network for details and…

• Come Join Us at the Ning Appathon!

  Lane LiaBraaten

  21 Oct 2009 | 3:40 pm

  To continue the momentum from our recent Ning Apps launch -- our Apps program based on OpenSocial -- we're excited to announce that we'll be holding a special developer event called the Ning Appathon at our offices in Palo Alto, CA on Thursday, November 5th from 6pm-10pm.The event will include:An overview of Ning Apps and our OpenSocial implementationPresentations from existing Ning Apps developersA chance to meet members of the Ning Engineering and Developer Advocacy teamsFree pizza and beer :)Most importantly, we'll be announcing the start of a week-long app development competition which…

• Write a Gadget, Win $5000!

  Chris Schalk, Google Developer Advocate

  23 Sep 2009 | 3:55 pm

  Mark Halvorson from Atlassian Software here! You may have read my blog post a while back about Why Enterprise Software Provider Atlassian chose OpenSocial Atlassian. We've been working hard over the past year adding an OpenSocial container based on Shindig into JIRA 4.  I'm writing today because we've got some cool news for all you gadget developers out there.But before I mention that, I wanted to give you a heads up about Atlassian. We build affordable, lightweight software that helps enterprises collaborate better. Our products include Confluence, recognized as the most widely-used…

• MySpace Full Support of OpenSocial 0.9 REST APIs Now Available

  Lane LiaBraaten

  22 Sep 2009 | 9:45 am

  MySpace is pleased to unleash our full support of OpenSocial 0.9. MySpace's OpenSocial 0.9 implementation was built on an entirely new framework with three main goals in mind for developers; stability, performance and compliance to the OpenSocial 0.9 specification.  These three goals will yield more consistent results, fewer errors, and means that your code should be even more portable to other social networks that support OpenSocial.While we're labeling this as a BETA, we feel our APIs are in a very solid state and are ready for widespread use. The PHP and C# SDKs have been fully updated to…

• Japan's mixi has launched its OpenSocial Container for all users!

  Chris Schalk, Google Developer Advocate

  17 Sep 2009 | 4:39 pm

  Hello! My name is Yoichiro Tanaka, and I belong to the Platform Team of mixi, Inc. "mixi" is currently the most popular social networking service (SNS) in Japan and has more than 17 million registered users. I am happy to announce that we have released "mixi apps" which is based on OpenSocial to all of our users. As of September 4th, more than 220 apps have already been registered and launched!Backgroundmixi was originally launched in February 2004 as one of the first social networking services in Japan. It lets users create profiles, make friends with other users, post diaries, discuss in…

• 
  Amazon Web Services Blog

• New EC2 High-Memory Instances

  AWS Evangelist

  27 Oct 2009 | 12:00 am

  In many cases, scaling out (by launching additional instances) is the best way to bring additional CPU processing power and memory to bear on a problem, while also distributing network traffic across multiple NICs (Network Interface Controllers). Certain workloads, however, are better supported by scaling up with a more capacious instance. Examples of these workloads include commercial and open source relational databases, mid-tier caches such as memcache, and media rendering. To enable further scaling up for these workloads, we are introducing a new family of memory-heavy EC2 instances with…

• Amazon EC2 - Now an Even Better Value

  AWS Evangelist

  26 Oct 2009 | 11:59 pm

  Effective November 1, 2009, the following per-hour prices will be in effect for Amazon EC2: US EU Linux Windows SQL Linux Windows SQL m1.small $0.085 $0.12 $0.095 $0.13 m1.large $0.34 $0.48 $1.08 $0.38 $0.52 $1.12 m1.xlarge $0.68 $0.96 $1.56 $0.76 $1.04 $1.64 c1.medium $0.17 $0.29 $0.19 $0.31 c1.xlarge $0.68 $1.16 $2.36 $0.76 $1.24 $2.44 This represents a reduction of up to 15% from the current prices for Linux instances and is a direct result of our policy of working non-stop to drive our operating costs down for the benefit of our customers. This does not affect the price of our two new…

• Introducing Amazon RDS - The Amazon Relational Database Service

  AWS Evangelist

  26 Oct 2009 | 11:56 pm

  We are always looking for ways to make it faster, simpler, and more fun to develop applications of all types. Every hour that you don't spend fiddling with hardware, tracing cables, installing operating systems or managing databases is an hour that you can spend on the unique and value-added aspects of your application. Today I'd like to tell you about our newest service, the Amazon Relational Database Service, or Amazon RDS for short. Now in beta, RDS makes it easier for you to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. You get direct database access without…

• New Public Data Set: YRI Trio

  AWS Evangelist

  19 Oct 2009 | 12:52 pm

  The YRI Trio Public Data Set provides complete genome sequence data for three Yoruba individuals from Ibadan, Nigeria, which represent the first human genomes sequenced using Illumina’s next generation Sequence-by-Synthesis technology. This data represents some of the first individual human genomes to be sequenced and peer-reviewed (the full story is here). This article contains full information about this remarkable and ground-breaking effort. The data is described as "containing paired 35-based reads of over 30x average depth." Basically this means that the data contains a large…

• AWS Workshops in Beijing, Bangalore and Chennai

  AWS Evangelist

  18 Oct 2009 | 2:36 pm

  I will be in China and India starting next week. Apart from other meetings and presentations to user group, this time, I will be taking up 3-hour workshops. These workshops are targeted at architects and technical decision makers and attendees will get a chance to play with core AWS infrastructure services.If you are a System Integrator or Independent Software Vendor, Enterprise Architect or a entrepreneur, this will be a great opportunity to meet and learn more about AWS.Seats are limited and prior registration is required:AWS Workshop in BeijingOct 24th : http://sd2china.csdn.net(in…

• 
  puredanger.com Blog

• Inside the Strange Loop

  Alex

  1 Nov 2009 | 8:04 pm

  Now that a week has passed, I’ve had some time to collect a few thoughts about the Strange Loop conference last week. I got the idea for Strange Loop back in January and I’ve been planning it since March so for me it’s been my baby for a long time. Photographer: Anna Aquino Photographer: Anna Aquino It was a lot of work but I enjoyed it tremendously and found the conference very satisfying. Below I’ll try to summarize both feedback I got and my own personal opinions on some of it. Strange Loop came into my mind originally as something in the wonderful St. Louis fall,…

• Map bugs

  Alex

  27 Oct 2009 | 10:37 am

  A colleague ran into some bugs this morning in Cliff Click’s “High Scale Lib”, specifically in NonblockingHashMap. I mentioned them on Twitter and some people asked me to blog, so here you go. NBHM is a masterful concurrent Map implementation that allows for a highly concurrent usage, beyond what your more familiar ConcurrentHashMap can handle. Make no mistake, CHM works just fine for a lot of people and it’s an excellent implementation. NBHM achieves greater concurrency under large numbers of threads by using “non-blocking synchronization” (you’ll…

• St. Louis Ethical Society Sunday: Raising Freethinkers

  Alex

  2 Oct 2009 | 6:57 pm

  On the off-chance that some of you out there are parents that would be interested in this, the St. Louis Ethical Society is hosting a talk this Sunday at 11 am by Dale McGowan. He’s a good speaker and has a lot of excellent advice, especially if you are raising children and aren’t involved in a religious tradition yourself. DALE MCGOWAN left a 15-year career as a college professor in 2006 to pursue writing full-time. He edited and co-authored Parenting Beyond Belief and Raising Freethinkers, the first comprehensive resources for nonreligious parents. He writes the secular…

• Some St. Louis tech events

  Alex

  19 Sep 2009 | 8:51 am

  Before I forget, I wanted to mention some upcoming St. Louis tech events. Oct 16th – 18th – Coders 4 Charities – this is an awesome event that brings together St. Louis area developers to build software and solutions that charities need. Oct 22nd – 23rd – Strange Loop 2009 – this is my baby of course and it’s shaping up to be a fantastic event. It’s getting full so register soon. Nov 7th – 8th – STL BarCamp 09 – following the well-established BarCamp tradition, this will be an open conference where St. Louis developers can…

• Got any thoughts about Ehcache?

  Alex

  15 Sep 2009 | 10:52 pm

  I work at Terracotta and you may have heard that we recently acquired the intellectual property for Ehcache and hired Greg Luck, head Ehcachian. Terracotta has long supported a clustered Ehcache integration but we now have the opportunity to do a much tighter level of integration and we are hard at work on it. We’re hoping to get the first version out in the next month and it is really focused on existing users of Ehcache more so than existing Terracotta or even Terracotta+Ehcache users. We want to make it dead easy to start from Ehcache and move to clustered Ehcache with Terracotta…

• 
  Udi Dahan - The Software Simplist

• Search and Messaging

  udidahan

  1 Nov 2009 | 9:33 pm

  One question that I get asked about quite a bit with relation to messaging is about search. Isn’t search inherently request/response? Doesn’t it have to return immediately? Wouldn’t messaging in this case hurt our performance? While I tend to put search in the query camp in the when keeping the responsibility of commands and queries separate, and often recommend that those queries be done without messaging, there are certain types of search where messaging does make sense. In this post, I’ll describe certain properties of the problem domain that make messaging a good…

• MySpace Architecture Considered Expensive

  udidahan

  9 Oct 2009 | 2:24 pm

  I just finished listening to the Microsoft presentation on how they use the Concurrency & Coordination Runtime (CCR) in MySpace (the stated largest web site running .NET). Some interesting numbers were stated in the talk. Tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of requests per second Over 3 thousand web servers Over a thousand mid-tier servers No wonder most big web sites don’t run .NET. The Windows licenses would put them out of business. Well, that is if you follow those same architectural practices. I’ve written in the past of alternative architectural approaches that…

• [Article] EDA: SOA through the looking glass

  udidahan

  29 Sep 2009 | 4:05 am

  My latest article has been published in issue 21 of the Microsoft Architecture Journal: EDA: SOA Through The Looking Glass While event-driven architecture (EDA) is a broadly known topic, both giving up ACID integrity guarantees and introducing eventual consistency make many architects uncomfortable. Yet it is exactly these properties that can direct architectural efforts toward identifying coarsely grained business-service boundaries—services that will result in true IT-business alignment. Business events create natural temporal boundaries across which there is no business expectation of…

• Progressive .NET Wrap-up

  udidahan

  6 Sep 2009 | 11:06 pm

  So, I’ve gotten back from a most enjoyable couple of days in Sweden where I gave two half-day tutorials, the first being the SOA and UI composition talk I gave at the European Virtual ALT.NET meeting (which you can find online here) and the other on DDD in enterprise apps (the first time I’ve done this talk). I’ve gotten some questions about my DDD presentation there based on Aaron Jensen’s pictures: Yes – I talk with my hands. All the time. That slide is quite an important one – I talked about it for at least 2 hours. Here it is again, this time in full:…

• Don’t Delete – Just Don’t

  udidahan

  1 Sep 2009 | 5:04 am

• 
  Agile Software Development

• Product Owner vs Product Manager

  jackMilunsky

  5 Nov 2009 | 10:00 pm

  Introduction Based on a recent post on yahoo forums, seems like there may still be confusion out there as to what the differences are between these two roles. Questions like, is there overlap? can the Product Manager take on the responsibilities of the Product Owner? what are the specific requirements for either role? pop up all the time. There was a really good discussion on the Scrum Development Yahoo group on this topic and some really good points were made. So I'll try to distill this for you here and of course put my own twist on this. I think that the founders of Scrum purposely chose a…

• Switching stories mid sprint

  jackMilunsky

  23 Oct 2009 | 11:08 pm

  Introduction I blogged about this some time ago and then posted the blog on various agile forums to judge peoples responses. Most of the responses were well reasoned, however, one of the responses I received shocked me somewhat and so I feel that it's worth blogging about this particular situation once more. The response I received was "You're not serious you're going to ignore the PO" and "You can't be a slave to the process" In all fairness, there are many situations under which the need to switch stories arise. And the specifics were not really provided. For example: How long are the…

• State of Agile

  jackMilunsky

  8 Oct 2009 | 11:00 pm

  Introduction Seems like there's lots going on in the agile world right now. Lots of talk about Lean and it's impact on Agile. Lots of attacks going on at the CSM certification. Kanban is all over the news these days. And just last week, I read about a new Agile methodology called Stride. So how do we make sense of this all? My opinion is that there is value in each of the methodologies (for the purposes of this blog I'll refer to them all as methodologies even though some of you might not think of them as such). It's real important to read about them all so that you are armed with enough…

• Poka Yoke, error handling for your process

  Mendelt

  6 Oct 2009 | 11:00 pm

  Software engineering is still a very human endeavor. Its a complex process that requires our ability to create non-standard solutions for non-standard problems. But with this ability to creatively solve problems comes a tendency to introduce defects, one of the seven wastes lean production and lean programming try to eliminate. Jack Milunsky describes several ways to reduce the amount of defects in his article. I want to look at another idea from lean manufacturing for reducing the number of defects called Poka Yoke in Japanese and have a look at how we can apply this idea to software…

• The 7 Software Development Wastes - Lean series Part 7 - Defects

  jackMilunsky

  25 Sep 2009 | 11:11 pm

  Introduction When one looks at all the wastes, defects has to be the most obvious one. The cost and repercussions of finding defects varies depending on where in the cycle they're found. Defects found early on in the development life-cycle are way less costly to resolve than defects found later on in the cycle; the most expensive being when applications are already in-production. Additionally, depending on when the defects are found, defects can and do trigger other wastes like task switching, relearning etc. Defects can be very costly for an organization. So the trick with defects is that…

• 
  Agile Software Development Made Easy!

• eBook - Agile Software Development Made Easy!

  30 Oct 2009 | 6:00 am

  Many thanks to everyone who has bought my ebook - Agile Software Development Made Easy! so far. It's gone fairly well and that gives me all the extra encouragement I need to finish my paper book! It probably won't be ready until next year some time, but my intention is to produce a product that allows you to take away all the best content from this blog and read at your convenience.Thanks again to all those who've bought the ebook in the meantime. That really is much appreciated!Kelly.

• Lean and Scrum - Chicken and Egg

  29 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am

  Here is a really interesting post from John Scumniotales, one of the inventors of Scrum. Here he sets the record straight about whether or not Scrum was based on the concepts of Lean manufacturing, as pioneered by the likes of Toyota and Honda...Lean and Scrum - Chicken and EggWhilst this is clearly admirable for the inventors of Scrum, they clearly share some similar principles and philosophies. But in some ways I was disappointed to hear this. The idea that Scrum was based on the widely celebrated principles of Lean manufacturing really added some credibility to Scrum and other agile/lean…

• Which Agile Methodology: Scrum, XP, Either, Both or Neither?

  28 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am

  Here is an interesting article on InfoQ about the debate over agile methodologies, and which is best: Scrum, XP, either, both or neither?Personally I think they are entirely complimentary as they cover different aspects of software development. I find it useful to think of Scrum as an agile management methodology, whilst eXtreme Programming (XP) focuses more on agile engineering.In an earlier post, I explain my views on this in a bit more detail; see here...eXtreme Programming versus Scrum.What do *you* think?Kelly.Photo by Mike Cogh

• 55 Page eBook - Agile Software Development Made Easy!

  28 Oct 2009 | 1:18 am

  Over the last couple of years, I've had quite a few requests to turn this blog into a book. Finally I've made the commitment to do it, and hopefully you'll see it for sale on Amazon in a few months time...In the meantime, I've decided to release the first couple of sections as a 55 page eBook called 'Agile Software Development Made Easy!'I've updated all my posts in the series' 10 Key Principles of Agile Software Development, and How To Implement Scrum in 10 Easy Steps. I've brought the text up-to-date with my current thinking, and in a few cases I've expanded on the points on my blog. I've…

• Agile Software Development Made Easy!

  27 Oct 2009 | 1:46 pm

  Hi all. I'm very grateful that so many blogs and web sites link to this blog. Many, of course, still link with the old name, 'All About Agile', as the link text. If that's you, would you mind updating the link text to 'Agile Software Development Made Easy!' so it reflects the new name?Many thanks in advance!Kelly.

• 
  Agile Commons

• How do you Celebrate?

  Ryan Martens

  30 Oct 2009 | 2:42 pm

  I was raised in the land of big software releases. I spent over a decade celebrating the release of software to gold master at five different companies.  These events included plaques and various levels of behavior based on the amount of flesh that was lost in the release.  A few of them were great, but many of them left a bad taste in your mouth based on what was shipped or not shipped. Early on at Rally, it was the same way.  We celebrated releases.  In our case, the numbered releases come about every 6 to 8 weeks.  I can recount having some over-the-top release parties, but mostly…

• Forming, Storming, Norming, and Swarming – The Tuckman Model for Scrum

  Alan Atlas

  29 Oct 2009 | 4:28 am

  I was teaching a CSM course a few months back when a question came up, as one often does, that needed an answer built around the concept of swarming. An extremely creative example of the swarming concept Swarming is something that is strangely alien to many folks in software development, so I’ll explain it here. Also, if I don’t explain it here then I won’t have enough to make a good blog post, and we can’t have that, can we? The idea of swarming is to get the whole scrum team, or as much of the team as possible, to all jump onto a Product Backlog item (PBI) together and get it done…

• Agile Rollout Planning – 5 Must Haves

  Ryan Martens

  26 Oct 2009 | 3:29 pm

  Just published in Dr. Dobb’s is my article on Agile Social Contracts;  It covers the process of Agile rollout planning and the burning need for a clear commitment to your teams and organization.  What is not as well covered are the other four components. I make the argument in the article that Agile enterprise adoption is easy, if you are prepared and crisp with the right structure and discipline. Here are the five items you need to be successful at Agile release planning or Agile Enterprise Rollout planning: Release Planning Structure Agile Enterprise Rollout Structure Team –…

• Benefits of attaining the “Flow” state in Agile software development

  Ryan Martens

  22 Oct 2009 | 4:20 am

  Sarah: “Walter, I just want to check in with you following the team demonstration and see how you are doing with the new Agile approach” Walter: “Sarah the results were thrilling for the customer and the team.  Everyone seemed engaged and the dialogue was very healthy. I see it, but it does not make sense.  We are moving features through the team faster, but I had to do this with dedicated resources.  I am sure this is costing me more.” Sarah: “Walter, this is totally normal.  You are seeing the difference between single tasking and multi-tasking as well as optimizing the whole…

• Agile Transition Plans – an example

  Ryan Martens

  20 Oct 2009 | 4:30 am

  I do not believe there is a recipe for Agile enterprise transition plans because good ones must take the context and setting of the organization into account. I do believe that starting step-by-step is the only way to get the snow ball of incremental improvement rolling down hill.  Our model, Flow-Pull-Innovate, is based on a strategy of creating a self-funding sustainable approach to adopting Agile; where some of the savings/profits from each step are reinvested in the next improvement step. (See my post An Alternative to Agile Adoption Cookbooks – Flow, Pull, Innovate for details on…

• 
  Successful Software

• Off to ESWC 2009

  Andy Brice

  4 Nov 2009 | 6:27 am

  I will be off to ESWC 2009 in Berlin in a few days. I am doing a talk “Marketing for microISVs – embracing the dark side?” on the Saturday morning. It is going to be tough to tackle as huge a subject as marketing in 45 minutes including questions, but I like a challenge! I am also looking forwarding to touching base with old acquaintances and meeting some new people. If you are going to there, do come and say hello (this is what I look like). Posted in conference, marketing, microISV, software Tagged: 2009, berlin, conference, eswc, european, marketing, software, talk

• How good are your backups?

  Andy Brice

  28 Oct 2009 | 3:07 pm

  We all know we need to do backups. But that is only half the story. Have you actually checked you can read them back if you need to? I have heard stories of people religiously backing up to mag tape every day for years, only to find out the tapes were corrupt and couldn’t be read back when needed. I checked my backups recently to ensure I could read them back. Here is what I found out: I was backing up my SVN repository on my Mac Mini to a single .tar.gz file which I then copied across onto a USB disk attached to a Windows box. The file had grown unnoticed to >4GB in size. But the…

• Apple resort to FUD marketing

  Andy Brice

  24 Oct 2009 | 4:08 pm

  Apple have resorted to ugly FUD marketing in their latest ad. This seems a bit rich given that Mac OS X 10.6 has a bug that can delete all your user data. Posted in Apple, MacOSX, marketing, Microsoft, software, videos Tagged: 10.6, ad, Apple, mac, Microsoft, windows 7

• Why I won’t be bothering with the Windows 7 logo program

  Andy Brice

  21 Oct 2009 | 2:47 pm

  Am I the only one being totally bombarded with ‘Give your application the green light’ and related emails from Microsoft and its minions? I must have had at least 30 so far. I took a few minutes to list my product in the Windows 7 compatibility guide (beware, cheesy audio). But that is all I intend to do. I went to the trouble of getting the ‘works with Vista’ logo in 2007. The process was very broken: The winqual and Partner websites give me “certified by unknown authority” warnings. The Winqual website didn’t work at all in FireFox. There was a…

• A survey of ecommerce providers for software vendors

  Andy Brice

  12 Oct 2009 | 7:15 am

  Overview The choice of ecommerce provider is probably one of the more important ones you make as a software vendor. It isn’t too hard to compare providers by feature set or price. But what about other vital attributes, such as support, reliability, ease of set-up and how they treat your customers? It isn’t realistic to try every provider, so this major decision is often made on the basis of haphazard anecdotal evidence from forums. I created a survey in an attempt to gather some systematic data on the ecommerce providers most commonly used by small software vendors. I present the…

• 
  Encosia

• Using jQuery validation with ASP.NET WebForms

  Dave Ward

  4 Nov 2009 | 1:57 am

  You’ve probably noticed that Jörn Zaefferer’s jQuery validation plugin has been gaining momentum in the ASP.NET community lately. Between Microsoft’s implied endorsement via ASP.NET MVC 2.0 integration and the plugin’s recent inclusion on the Microsoft AJAX CDN, adoption is only increasing. Unfortunately for those who don’t or can’t use ASP.NET MVC yet, using the validation plugin within WebForms applications can be tricky. Because the WebForms Postback model requires that the entire page be contained within a single form element, form submissions that shouldn’t trigger…

• Do you know about this undocumented Google CDN feature?

  Dave Ward

  11 Oct 2009 | 8:26 pm

  By now, you probably already know that Google hosts jQuery on its AJAX APIs CDN, free of charge. As I’ve discussed here in the past, I’m a big fan of using their CDN to achieve decreased latency, increased parallelism, and better caching. If you’ve explored the AJAX APIs documentation a bit, you may know that jQuery UI is also hosted on Google’s CDN. Unfortunately, since jQuery UI plugins depend on a ThemeRoller theme, using a CDN for jQuery UI isn’t as easy as with jQuery itself. Or, is it? My <head> is in the cloud While poking around a couple months ago, I stumbled upon…

• Updated: See how I used Firebug to learn jQuery

  Dave Ward

  20 Sep 2009 | 10:44 pm

  It was great to see all the positive responses to the screencast I recently recorded with Craig Shoemaker on how to use Firebug’s console to learn jQuery. That being my first screencast, I really appreciate all of your support. However, you almost unanimously commented that it was too difficult to read the commands typed at the console, and you were right. So, Craig and I re-recorded the entire thing, paying extra attention to the legibility of the end result. Craig also managed to edit the same content down to 9:59m this time, so you can watch it on YouTube if you prefer: If the HQ version…

• Is Silverlight the new WebForms?

  Dave Ward

  14 Sep 2009 | 8:27 am

  While there’s no question that HTML, CSS, and JavaScript form the foundation of modern web development, achieving fluency hasn’t been easy for everyone. In particular, the transition from stateful development with pixel-precise layout – such as VB6 offered – has proven to be especially difficult. HTTP’s stateless nature and HTML’s relatively imprecise layout present a new, different set of challenges. WebForms aspired to insulate us from those inconveniences. Promising rapid, drag ‘n drop layout and event-driven programming, WebForms was an attractive choice for anyone…

• Highslide JS .NET v4.1.5

  Dave Ward

  25 Aug 2009 | 9:33 am

  Though the version number only inched up 0.0.1 with this release, it brings quite a few new features; most of them in response to your requests. I can’t include every request, but I will continue to improve the control based on your feedback, so keep them coming. Changes in v4.1.5 include: Updated the base Highslide JS library to v4.1.5. Updated the embedded CSS to the latest version bundled with Highslide JS. This fixes the issue with the transparent/blank bar during enlargement if a caption is set. A few internal improvements that should make it work more reliably in some situations.

• 
  The Endeavour

• How to delete pages from a PDF without Adobe Acrobat

  John

  6 Nov 2009 | 5:54 pm

  How can you delete pages from a PDF file if you don’t have Adobe Acrobat? Download PDFCreator from SourceForge. It installs as a printer. It lets you create PDFs from any application by selecting PDFCreator as your “printer.” To delete pages from an existing PDF, open the PDF in Adobe Reader and print to PDFCreator the pages you don’t want to delete. I don’t have a lot of experience with PDFCreator; I just downloaded it today. But it looks good and it worked well for what I was trying to do.

• Four patterns in Windows keyboard shortcuts

  John

  5 Nov 2009 | 3:17 am

  Here are four patterns for organizing the most common keyboard shortcuts for Windows. First I’ll list the patterns, then I’ll give some qualifications and elaborate on the patterns. Keyboard shortcuts involving letters are all of the form Control-<letter> or Windows-<letter>. The letters used in Control shortcuts and Windows shortcuts don’t overlap. Control in combination with navigation keys moves the cursor. Shift in combination with navigation keys makes a selection. The Tab key cycles through things. What the key cycles through depends on what it is paired…

• A little coffee on the prairie

  John

  4 Nov 2009 | 5:36 am

  I was reading Little House on the Prairie with my youngest daughter the other day. Here’s a passage that surprised me. Then Pa brought water from the creek, while Mary and Laura helped Ma get supper. Ma measured coffee beans into the coffee mill and Mary ground them. I’d read this book with my other children and hadn’t given this part a thought. This time I thought about how odd it was that they had coffee. At this point the Ingalls family was moving from Wisconsin to Kansas some time in the 1870’s. The family of five and all their worldly goods were packed into a…

• Manage your project portfolio

  John

  3 Nov 2009 | 7:08 am

  Most books on project management are written for someone managing one project at a time, working with a team of people who only work on that project.  Some companies work that way, but certainly not all do. I’ve seldom worked that way. At one point I “managed” so many projects that I could not tell you the exact number without looking at my list. Johanna Rothman’s new book Manage Your Project Portfolio addresses the challenges of managing not just one project but a portfolio of projects. The book does not tell you how to work multiple simultaneous projects but rather…

• Yet another view of the negative binomial

  John

  3 Nov 2009 | 7:03 am

  A while back I wrote a post on three views of the negative binomial distribution. This post adds a fourth view. One of the shortcomings of the Poisson distribution is that its variance exactly equals its mean. It is common in practice for the variance of count data to be larger than the mean, so it’s natural to look for a distribution like the Poisson but with larger variance. We start with a Poisson random variable X with mean λ, but then we make λ itself random and suppose that λ comes from a gamma(α, β) distribution. Then the marginal distribution on X is a negative binomial…

• 
  Programmable Web

• Factual Launches Open Data Platform, Including API

  Adam DuVander

  5 Nov 2009 | 8:21 pm

  Structured data has an open platform, thanks to a new startup aptly named Factual. At first glance, it seems like Excel on the web. However, Factual is more database-oriented, with joining and filtering built-in. Plus, sharing and discussing the data is an integral part of the experience. Most functions on the site, including both reading and writing data, can also happen via the Factual API. Founder Gil Elbaz announced Factual’s launch: “Today, we are announcing the beta launch of Factual, a platform where anyone can share and mash open data on any subject. Factual provides smart…

• PayPal Releases PayPal X and Launches $50,000 Developer Challenge

  Andres Ferrate

  5 Nov 2009 | 1:46 am

  PayPal has officially released PayPal X, its next generation platform that includes a variety of APIs and other resources for developers. Primarily aimed at allowing developers to embed payment processing in a wider array of applications and environments (including mobile devices), this is a major expansion of PayPal’s APIs. The announcement was made at the PayPaxl X Innovate Conference, which gathered an enthusiastic crowd of developers and third party integrators. This was PayPal’s first developer conference and it was sold out. Sebastian Rupley has a good summary of the…

• Latest APIs: Museum of London, Realtime Sensors, Yahoo Contacts, Internet Marketing

  John Musser

  4 Nov 2009 | 8:52 am

  In addition to the new APIs from Google, Intuit and others, we had another 4 APIs added to our API directory last week. These include an API for the Museum of London; an API that lets you store and use realtime sensor, energy and environment data from buildings and other devices; an API for managing SEO, PR and social media campaigns; and a new API from Yahoo for their Contacts service. Outlined below is more detail on each of these new APIs: Museum of London API: The Museum of London API is a REST interface to the following data sources: publications from the Archaeology Service; events at…

• Twitter Offers New Lists API to Developers

  Michael Manoochehri

  3 Nov 2009 | 11:29 pm

  Twitter has just taken a step toward a richer social experience with its exciting new “lists” feature, which gives users the ability to organize individual accounts into groups. For example, a user can create and share a list of “celebrity” accounts that they follow. Twitter lists may be marked by their creators as public, or kept private for personal use. In a move sure to be popular with developers, Twitter has added list manipulation features to their API (see our Twitter API profile). Last week, Twitter founder Biz Stone wrote about the significance of the Lists…

• Spotted in the Wild: Google Wave Federation Server

  Andres Ferrate

  2 Nov 2009 | 9:32 pm

  The latest news surrounding Google Wave is the release of a prototype server for the Google Wave Federation Protocol that allows developers to set up their own wave services. In essence, Google has released a federation port for Google Wave’s developer instance, allowing developers to start working with federating waves against the Google Wave Sandbox. The news was announced on the Google Wave Developer blog, with additional details about the release: When we first unveiled Google Wave a few months ago, one of the fundamental concepts we discussed was the vision for wave as an open…

• 
  The Programmer's Paradox

• Programming Structure

  Paul W. Homer

  6 Nov 2009 | 1:24 pm

  I've been a little sluggish with my writing, lately. Probably because I've been very busy rewriting a big piece of code at work and I'm not much of multi-tasker (if it involves thinking).Still, I need to get back to my exploring proposed laws, starting with the first set:Fundamental Laws of Programming Structure:1. All programming code is hard to write and has bugs.2. The lower the code is in an

• Fundamental Laws

  Paul W. Homer

  17 Oct 2009 | 10:36 am

  OK, technically I'm under the influence. No, not drugs or alcohol, but rather Number Theory. In the last few weeks I've been consuming as much Number Theory as I can get my hands on. Sure, it's having some perverse effect on the way I see other issues, but occasionally one has to forgive the rigor, and just see it as a necessary impediment towards progress.In thinking about it, I realized that

• The Value of Code

  Paul W. Homer

  14 Oct 2009 | 8:13 pm

  I've got a couple of interesting posts in the works, but for each one I'm having trouble with some of the essentials. It seems as if I've burnt out the left-hand side of my brain for a while. I've become mathematically challenged.In the meantime, I figured I could get away with another short set of observations.Recently I was installing a copy of Ubuntu Linux on my home machine.I grew up using

• Not Interested

  Paul W. Homer

  30 Sep 2009 | 7:09 pm

  I'm not exactly sure about how many of the various pieces of software I use frequently that excessively nag me about upgrading to their latest version. It's a lot. Way too many.I guess many programmers find it really neat that they can call home in their code, check the version number and then automatically inform me that my version is no longer up-to-date. It is a neat trick, the only thing is,

• bXML

  Paul W. Homer

  13 Sep 2009 | 2:13 pm

  Lately, I've been feeling undecided. There are so many great things I want to write about, but I fear that there are fewer and fewer people who want to read them. I'm split between not caring and just doing my own thing, or trying harder to pick more accessible topics to gain acceptance.We're drifting farther and farther away from wanting to know -- really know -- about stuff, and getting more

• 
  CodeHill

• Installing ionCube Loader in Windows Server

  Amgad Suliman

  5 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

  ionCube Loader is a free PHP extension used to decode PHP files encrypted using ionCube’s PHP Encoder. Follow the steps below to install it in a Windows machine. Download the Windows installer file from http://www.ioncube.com/loaders.php. Run the installer and select a temporary folder to extract the files to. Move the extracted files from the temporary folder to [...] Related posts:Installing the AJAX Controls Toolkit 3.5Get a Video File’s Details Using WindowsLock, Sleep or Hibernate Windows using C#

• Understanding SEO Terminology for Better Website Marketing

  Amgad Suliman

  2 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am

  Effective website marketing begins with understanding Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and its terminology. It is also important when marketing online to understand how to implement SEO into creating an attractive web page that will be found by both search engines and prospective buyers. The concept of SEO is to utilize recognized techniques in order to help [...] Related posts:My ‘Contact Us’ IdeaAnother 6 Free Online Web Tools for WebmastersUsing Microsoft Office’s OCR Engine

• 99 Bottles of Beer in Different Programming Languages

  Amgad Suliman

  12 Oct 2009 | 7:00 am

    99 Bottles of Bear should be an interesting website for developers. It has the lyrics of the song 99 Bottles of Beer written in 1290 different programming languages. It was developed by Oliver Schade, Gregor Scheithauer and Stefan Scheler. The lyrics are here if you don’t know the song.   Related posts:Are You Using a Popular Programming [...] Related posts:Are You Using a Popular Programming Language

• An Online Tool to Generate QR Codes

  Amgad Suliman

  8 Oct 2009 | 7:00 am

  A tool to generate a JPEG image containing a QR Code. A QR Code is a two-dimensional bar code created by the Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994. A lot of the current mobile phones can read this code using the camera. You could use this form to transfer text to a mobile quickly instead of [...] Related posts:An Online Tool to Generate The MD5 of TextAn Online GUID Generator ToolOnline Tool to Get The Gravatar of an Email

• Online Tool to Get The Gravatar of an Email

  Amgad Suliman

  5 Oct 2009 | 7:00 am

  A tool to get the Gravatar of an email. Gravatars are images associated with email addresses.   Related posts:An Online GUID Generator ToolAn Online Tool to Generate QR CodesDisplaying Gravatars Using C# Related posts:An Online GUID Generator ToolAn Online Tool to Generate QR CodesDisplaying Gravatars Using C#

• 
  Embedded Computing Design

• Think Tank Blasts Cuomo's Witch Hunt Against Intel

  4 Nov 2009 | 4:37 am

  WASHINGTON, D.C., November 4, 2009 – Today New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against Intel Corporation. The suit, which accuses Intel of violating antitrust laws through “coercion” and “bullying,” comes amidst an ongoing competition policy battle between Intel and the European Union over a record-shattering $1.5 billion fine that the EU levied against Intel earlier this year. Competition policy analysts at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based public interest group, were sharply critical of the…

• Tyco Electronics Provides LCD Coaxial Embedded Display Interface (LCEDI) Connectors for the PC Market

  4 Nov 2009 | 1:34 am

  HARRISBURG, PA. -- November 4, 2009 -- Tyco Electronics' next generation LCD Coaxial Embedded Display Interface (LCEDI) family of connectors is designed to provide exceptional electrical performance in both low-voltage differential signaling (LVDS) and embedded DisplayPort (eDP) applications. This family of connectors is licensed by I-PEX CO., LTD. and is fully compatible and intermateable with I-PEX CABLINE-VS connector series, recently selected by VESA (Video Electronics Standard Association) as the global standards connector for LED backlight wide (16x9) panel interface. Its ultra-low…

• ST's New MEMS Gyroscopes Enable Accurate Angular Motion Detection in Size- and Power-Constrained Consumer Applications

  4 Nov 2009 | 1:02 am

  Geneva, November 4, 2009 – STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM), the leading supplier of MEMS for consumer and portable applications[1], has expanded its motion-sensor portfolio with a broad range of thirteen new single- and two-axis gyroscopes. With more than a 50% shrink in volume over previous ST devices, reduced power consumption, and an aggressive price, ST’s new high-performance angular-motion sensors open the way to a wide range of innovative consumer applications, including gesture-controlled gaming and pointing devices, image stabilization in digital video or still cameras, and…

• ASSET's ScanWorks supports PLX Technology's PCI Express switch family's visionPAK diagnostic toolset

  3 Nov 2009 | 9:13 pm

  Richardson, TX (Nov. 4, 2009) – ASSET® InterTech, the leading supplier of open tools for embedded instrumentation for design validation, test and debug, and PLX Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: PLXT), the leading global supplier of PCI Express® (PCIe®) switch and bridge silicon, today announced that ASSET’s ScanWorks® platform for embedded instrumentation is supporting the exclusive PLX® visionPAK™ packet generator/system analyzer toolset. “visionPAK provides unique capabilities embedded in PLX PCIe devices helping users in system bring-up, board…

• ETAP Canada Ltd. Launches New Power Systems Website ETAP.ca

  3 Nov 2009 | 3:57 pm

  Expanded technical information, increased support options, and an updated interface, provide visitors with improved access to information. The new revamped website offers the latest in browser compatibility along with modernized layout for increased user-friendliness. “ETAP Canada Ltd. is proud to work with Bluetrain Inc., XHTMLthis.com, Gavin Hall, and Operation Technology, Inc. for this co-development website project. It is important to stay at the forefront of website technology in order to provide the best possible customer service. We continually try to improve and expand our…

• 
  Black Ninja Software

• We Will be Heading Down To A Few Conferences This Year

  donabel

  18 Oct 2009 | 7:15 pm

  A few of the Black Ninja’s will be headed down to various conferences this year to build up a bit more training and product knowledge in our core competency areas. Professional development is something we believe very strongly in and conferences are an important component to that. We’re looking to socialize and meet some of the key folks in our online community. Anyone interested in speaking with us, look for the people dressed in Black Ninja t-shirts! SharePoint Conferences 2009 – October 19-22 We do a fair bit of SharePoint consulting and custom development, so this…

• Are Vendor Certifications Still Valuable?

  donabel

  9 Oct 2009 | 10:48 am

  Certifications seemed to be the “it” thing in the late 90s early 2000. Companies would seek after anyone who had certification for a specific product because the perception at the time was that they were difficult to obtain and anyone with one must be an expert in that area. Now, however, is a totally different story. Certifications are, for the most part, easier to prepare for and pass. Perceptions about their relevance and trust factor have also changed, which begs the question “are these certifications still valuable”? Before providing my personal take on it, I’d like to go…

• Obie Fernandez on Pair Programming

  shereen

  25 Sep 2009 | 12:43 pm

  Anyone who has been around us long enough knows that we are huge fans of companies like HashRocket and 37Signals. Not because they’re making tons of money, although that’s an admirable trait, but because of their approach to software development as a whole. These companies above all else, pride themselves on excellence, and in our line of work, that’s something to strive for. Obie recently wrote an article that caught our attention, 10 Reasons Pair Programming Is Not For the Masses and I wanted to comment on a few of the points that he makes. We’ve considered this…

• How to Clear and Repopulate Your ASP.NET DropDown List with jQuery

  donabel

  4 Jun 2009 | 9:41 pm

  Yes you can call and use your ASP.NET controls from jQuery! Shereen has already posted a blog on how you can access these controls JQuery Accessing the Client Generated ID of ASP.NET Controls so feel free to check it out there first. Recently we’ve had to create a UI that has a datepicker, and the date that a user selects should determine what values get populated in an ASP.NET dropdown. Here’s how we did it We’ve listed below the two controls we’re using in this example: a calendar control and an asp.net drop down list. 1 2 <input id"datepicker"…

• Why We Love WooThemes

  shereen

  4 Jun 2009 | 9:12 am

  In case it’s not obvious, Black Ninja’s site uses WordPress. WordPress makes it super easy for us to keep an active profile on the web via quick and easy updates. But Wordpress on it’s own is not enough. We wanted a site that was not only functional but also looked good. During the early days of Black Ninja, we knew we wanted to get something up quickly but with little cost. We are a serious company, who prides itself on it’s professionalism, passion and dedication to the work we do and we wanted a site to reflect that. We’re also a fun bunch, so a bit of…

• 
  Ruminations of a Programmer

• DSLs In Action - Updates on the Book Progress

  Debasish

  2 Nov 2009 | 10:50 pm

  DSLs In Action has been out for a month now in MEAP with the first 3 chapters being published. DSL is an emerging topic and I am getting quite some feedback from the readers who have already purchased the MEAP edition. Thanks for all the feedback.Writing a book also has lots of similarities with coding. Particularly the refactoring part. The second attempt to articulate a piece of thought is almost always better than the first attempt, much like coding. You cannot imagine how many times I have discarded my first attempt and rewrote the stuff only to get a better feel of what I try to express…

• NOSQL Movement - Excited with the coexistence of Divergent Thoughts

  Debasish

  1 Nov 2009 | 9:35 pm

  Today we are witnessing a great bit of excitement with the NoSQL movement. Call it NoSQL (~SQL) or NOSQL (Not Only SQL), the movement has a mission. Not all applications need to store and process data the same way, and the storage should also be architected accordingly. Till today we have always been force-fitting a single hammer to drive every nail. Irrespective of how we process data in our application we have traditionally stored them as rows and columns in a relational database.When we talk about really big write scaling applications, relational databases suck big time. Normalized data,…

• Are ORMs really a thing of the past ?

  Debasish

  17 Oct 2009 | 11:48 am

  Stephan Schmidt has blogged on the ORMs being a thing of the past. While he emphasizes on ORMs' performance concerns and dismisses them as leaky abstractions that throw LazyInitializationException, he does not present any concrete alternative. In his concluding section on alternatives he mentions .."What about less boiler plate code due to ORMs? Good DAOs with standard CRUD implementations help there. Just use Spring JDBC for databases. Or use Scala with closures instead of templates. A generic base dao will provide create, read, update and delete operations. With much less magic than the ORM…

• 
  9lessons

• Jquery Basics Series - 2

  4 Nov 2009 | 10:35 am

  Very good response about "Jquery Basic Series - 1". Last series discussed about jquery installation and introduction. In this post I want to explain about animation Effects and Attributes. Effects Fading Out and In : $(selector).fadeOut() and $(selector).fadeIn() Sliding Up and Down : $(selector).slideUp() and $(selector).slideDown() Sliding Toggle : $(selector).slideToggle() Custom

• Jquery Basics Series -1

  4 Nov 2009 | 10:33 am

  Hi Friends, if you really want to learn jQuery follow basic series on 9lessons. Jquery is an awesome javascipt library, it’s help you for developing dazing web projects. In this tutorial I want to discuss very basic level jquery and working with Click() event. How to add jQuery to your website Installing You can download jquery.js file form jquery.com.

• Live Update and Delete Records with Animation Effect using Jquery and Ajax.

  1 Nov 2009 | 11:35 pm

  Some days back I had posted popular articles Insert a Record with animation effect. and Delete Records with Random Animation Effect using jquery and ajax. I received lot of requests from my readers that asked to me how to combine both scripts. So I had developed a tutorial Live update and delete records with animation effect using jquery and ajax implementing live() jquery event. Take a look

• JavaScript Frameworks and Libraries.

  26 Oct 2009 | 4:50 am

  Are you looking for JavaScript Frameworks & Libraries for developing dazing web projects? Take a look at this list of some nice 20 light weight frameworks. If you want to suggest other resources post a comment. Thanks ! SpryThe Spry framework for Ajax is a JavaScript library that provides easy-to-use yet powerful Ajax functionality that allows designers to build pages Ample SDKOpen Source

• Favorite Rating with jQuery and Ajax.

  25 Oct 2009 | 10:45 pm

  I received a mail from my reader that asked to me how to implement Show the love rating system like amypink.com. So I had designed Favorite Rating with jQuery and Ajax.. It's simple just changing little code on my old post Voting system with jQuery, Ajax and PHP.. Take a look at live demo Download Script     Live Demo Database Design images table images details CREATE TABLE images( img_id

• 
  Just a tech stuff

• CSS and JavaScript compression via django-compress

  Karol Zielinski

  5 Nov 2009 | 4:51 am

  I want to automate CSS/JavaScript compression in my django application. My choose is: django-compress. Easy-to-use, fast and… it works. Why do I need CSS/JavaScript compression? Simple: I want to optimize and speed up my website. One of the most import thing to achieve this, is to compress CSS and JavaScript files. Compression is nothing more than just a removing formatting and white spaces, trimming class names, omitting unambiguous quotes around attributes, etc. This can reduce file size by (more or less) 60%! Can I automate this process in django? Sure, yeah. That’s why I use…

• I’m building mail server

  Karol Zielinski

  3 Nov 2009 | 7:26 am

  I want to build mail server on my VPS (ubuntu). What I want to have is: multiple domains and users; users’ accounts in MySQL database; Courier package to control my pop and imap access to the emails. So.. let’s do it. Setting the hostname Check your hostname: hostname -f If it’s ok – skip this step. If it’s not: sudo vim /etc/hostname Replace the hostname with your mail server hostname. sudo vim /etc/hosts replace your current hostname to new one. Now sudo reboot and check hostname again. It should be ok right now. Set Reverse DNS / RDNS It’s some kind of…

• Subversion server, with web access on ubuntu

  Karol Zielinski

  29 Oct 2009 | 9:25 am

  Today I will present how to install subversion server (+ repository) with the apache module and web access protected by password. What is Subversion? Subversion is an open source version control system. Using Subversion, you can record the history of source files and documents. It manages files and directories over time. A tree of files is placed into a central repository. The repository is much like an ordinary file server, except that it remembers every change ever made to files and directories. Now… let’s fun. Create SVN repository I assume that you have apache installed.

• PHP via apache on the server with nginx and django

  Karol Zielinski

  27 Oct 2009 | 4:21 am

  I already described how to configure Wordpress on nginx + lighttpd + FastCGI + php (via spawn-fcgi), as well as how to configure php-fpm on server with nginx. Now… I will try to describe alternative way to serve php scripts on the machine with python apps (django) and nginx installed – via installed apache. Ok, we have apache already installed, so we don’t need to install anything else (like php-fpm or spawn-fcgi) to serve php scripts. We can use installed apache. I prefer to use php-fpm instead of this (because of its performance), however… sometimes it’s good…

• I want to serve php via Php-fpm on my ubuntu

  Karol Zielinski

  23 Oct 2009 | 4:52 am

  My plan is to have one server for my python and php applications. I already wrote about configuring nginx + apache for django applications. As well as configuring Wordpress on nginx + lighttpd + FastCGI + php (via spawn-fcgi). Today I will to present how to serve my php applications via php-fpm. Let’s go to work… I will use latest version of PHP – 5.2.11. I assume that you have nginx installed and configured. Install and configure php-fpm cd /usr/local/src wget http://pl2.php.net/get/php-5.2.11.tar.gz/from/pl.php.net/mirror tar zxvf php-5.2.11.tar.gz wget…

• 
  Learn jQuery Now

• A Brand New Look, Some Changes, and An Announcement

  admin

  26 Oct 2009 | 11:14 am

  I have made a lot of different changes to the website this weekend and I thought I should let everyone know about what is happening with the website. First are foremost, I have changed the design of... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Use hoverIntent To Capture Your Users Mouse Intentions

  admin

  14 Oct 2009 | 11:00 pm

  First of all, allow me to apologize for that title. There really is no better way to describe in a concise way what hoverIntent does. HoverIntent is a jQuery plugin that helps you capture mouse... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Use jQuery To Make Multiple Columns The Same Size

  admin

  8 Oct 2009 | 2:03 pm

  Probably just about every web developer has run into this problem. You have a two or three column layout on your website and your center column has a ton of great content that spans a very long way... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• A Multi-Purpose jQuery Toolkit Plugin

  admin

  7 Oct 2009 | 2:02 pm

  With all my journeys using jQuery, I have begun creating a special library file that contains little things that are not readily available in other plugins, but are incredibly useful. I was thinking... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Learn jQuery Now Chosen As An Exellent Resouce

  admin

  6 Oct 2009 | 5:57 pm

  Learn jQuery Now was chosen to be 1 of the 11 Excellent Resources for learning jQuery by Designer Daily. I cannot thank them enough for such a great recommendation! I have only been doing this site... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• 
  Jolicloud Blog

• Apps of the week: SwingVine, ListAtlas, Shorts Bay, MyOats, Trivial Pursuit Experiment and more.

  Jolicloud Team

  6 Nov 2009 | 10:04 am

  Some new cool apps in our directory this week: SwingVine Swingvine is a hybrid of an aggregator of information on pop culture and an analytics site that measures what people are looking for on the web. There are lots of sites out there trying to tell you what’s hot online at any given time, but SwingVine aims to make sense of it, has a nice interface, and works in real time. SwingVine also connects with Facebook so the social trends are based on your friends’ engagement with any given topic. Whatthetrend is a site to see what’s trending on Twitter and why. Quick explanations for…

• Selected new apps: Google Voice, TimeBridge, TubeRadio, Earth-Touch, Pixlr, ScaryGirl, and more.

  Jolicloud Team

  2 Nov 2009 | 3:06 pm

  There are now over 350 apps on the Jolicloud directory. Here is our latest selection: Google Voice Google’s telephony tool provides one local US number for all your phones, letting you choose which phone to pick up your calls on. In addition to forwarding calls, it also takes voice messages that you can listen to or read online. The service is only available in the US. Search engine Gazoopa retrieves similar images to any submitted picture or illustration. Breaking news site Tweetmeme aggregates the most retweeted Tweets, and Tweetmix searches content streams on any requested topic on…

• Featured apps this week: Tracks & Fields,Tracked, Penzu, Duffel, Hubble Site, and more.

  Jolicloud Team

  23 Oct 2009 | 11:36 am

  This week’s additions to the app directory. Tracks & Fields Tracks & Fields is a community for musicians and producers to collaborate on new songs. As well as collaborating over the web and procuring feedback this way, musicians are able to employ an online 8 track sequencer to create new music in real-time, as if they were all in the same room. Musicians can also connect with producers through the site. Entertainment guide/ VCR service Clicker catalogues thousands of shows, movies and music videos so you can easily discover what’s available to watch. Crowdsourced radio…

• Invite 10 friends to try out Jolicloud and help them make the switch

  Jolicloud Team

  22 Oct 2009 | 5:45 am

  It is now possible to share Jolicloud with your friends! We have given 10 invitations to all of our users to send out. You can send invitations straight from your Jolicloud. Just check your notifications on your Jolicloud dashboard, and click on the invitation link. Enter the email address of the person you want to send the invitation to, and click ‘Send’. That’s it. Your friend will receive an email including your name, a brief description of Jolicloud, and an invitation code to create their Jolicloud account and download the OS. Happy joliclouding!

• Our weekly selection of apps: Google Wave, Motherboard, Xtranormal, Research Channel, Q-block and more.

  Jolicloud Team

  16 Oct 2009 | 12:30 pm

  Some cool new additions to our directory this week: Google Wave Google’s over-hyped service has now reached some of our users. This real-time communication platform is now an app on jolicloud. To better understand how the new service combines aspects of email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management you can check this loooong video. For more real-time services, check out Flowchart, the real-time collaboration flowchart and mind mapping app, Searchtastic, which searches tweets from beyond Twitter’s limit of 7 days, and Trendsmap, a real-time…

• 
  GOYELLOblog

• Time Eaters at Work Cost € 1.56bn a Year

  Peter Horsten

  6 Nov 2009 | 1:40 pm

  var dzone_style="2";Have you ever wondered how much time you waste using social networking sites during your work day? According to surveys carried out in the UK, an average Joe spends around 40 minutes a week which leads to around €1.56bn annual income decrease. Over half of the 1460 office workers surveyed claimed that they use [...] Related posts:How to Ruin Your Career With One Click?The Gloomy Future of Social Networks From Hype to Collective IntelligenceHow Web 2.0 Influences HR 2.0 Trends

• We Won the “Young Entrepreneur Award”

  Peter Horsten

  29 Oct 2009 | 2:43 pm

  var dzone_style="2";In general we share our knowledge and experiences with you without too much self promotion. This post will be an exception to that rule. Last Tuesday we won the “Young Entrepreneur Award” and we want to share our pride with you. Some of our friends mentioned that this is the reward for three years [...] Related posts:Poland Among Top 10 Outsourcing Nations

• New Ubuntu Karmic Koala: The 6 Features I Was Waiting For

  Jakub Zalas

  29 Oct 2009 | 2:06 pm

  var dzone_style="2";Ubuntu 9.10, code name Karmic Koala, has just been released. It not only includes the usual improvements and updates but comes with a lot of new stuff. Some components of the system were completely replaced with modern equivalents. A complete overview is available on the Ubuntu website. Here I will describe the 6 features [...] No related posts.

• Search Your Social Network With Google Social Search

  Peter Horsten

  27 Oct 2009 | 7:28 am

  var dzone_style="2";Keeping a close eye on the people in your social network is all we want. Most of us also know how hard and time consuming this can be. Last week I showed that Gist is a powerful application to keep up to date with the people in your social network. Today Google released their [...] Related posts:Today Showed the Sensitivity of Our Social Network Environment. Can We Prevent It?How Many Contacts Can You Manage Through a Social Network?Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Twitter, Xing What Social Network Should I Use?

• Will Treehoo Manage to Compete With Google Meanwhile Saving Our Planet?

  Peter Horsten

  26 Oct 2009 | 8:15 am

  var dzone_style="2";You might think the IT industry is a very clean one from an environmental perspective, but it’s not. In fact the IT industry and the Internet are using such an amount of power that this is becoming a real issue. Data Centers where we store our servers, routers and switches to make our applications [...] Related posts:Google Needs More Than Caffeine to SurviveHow Many Contacts Can You Manage Through a Social Network?Top 5 Software Cost Saving Opportunities

• 
  Andrea Olivato's Blog

• Clean Wordpress Database removing empty categories

  Andrea Olivato

  4 Nov 2009 | 1:50 am

  If you own a very large Wordpress installation like the one I’m dealing with on LinuxFeed, you probably can not manually look for empty categories and remove them from the admin panel. With 13.000+ posts and 14.000+ categories it’s quite impossible to use Wordpress GUI for management, and great plugins like WP-Optimize or Optimize DB might [...]

• Seesmic Desktop with Twitter lists support review

  Andrea Olivato

  3 Nov 2009 | 11:27 am

  Just a few minutes ago I received an email from the Seesmic team sharing the beta preview of their 0.6.3 new version, featuring a full twitter lists support. I installed the new .air package and started playing with it. Integration seems complete, and honestly I didn’t find any bug on lists actions. As shown on the image [...]

• Using Regular Expressions to add links to tweets

  Andrea Olivato

  2 Nov 2009 | 1:45 pm

  The usage of twitter by its own web interface or via the most recent clients, accustomed users to see linked @usernames and #hashtags inside any status update they read. When using Twitter API on your own website, service or app, you need to deal with plain text tweet, with no tags so no links. Using Regular [...]

• Create a module for Gentoo Eselect

  Andrea Olivato

  23 Oct 2009 | 5:39 am

  I do Love eselect! For those who don’t know eselect is a ‘modular administration and configuration framework’. In simpler words it is a management tool shipped with Gentoo, able to switch between packages versions and configurations files, working with symbolic links and environmental variables. Just to better clarify eselect job, it is able to make you [...]

• Download Feeds avoiding Feedburner redirects

  Andrea Olivato

  20 Oct 2009 | 2:05 am

  When trying to access the original feed of a blog (or website) which makes use of Feedburner, your crawler ( or browser or script ) usually receives a 301 header, redirecting it to the Google version of the feed. This means that if you need to access the original source ( for faster aggregation, to [...]

• 
  Raakesh.com

• How to Cut down your cell phone bill by using Google Voice?

  Raakesh

  2 Nov 2009 | 9:14 am

  Google Voice is not an alternative to a phone line! Before there is any confusion, let me say that NO, Google Inc did not launch a new cell phone company, but rather just a service that lets you take advantage of the technology. But without having a cellular phone company, Google Inc did what will definitely make a big impact in the telecom industry. Let me explain: What is Google Voice? read more

• Podcast: Build High Quality Landing Pages for Organic and Paid (PPC) Traffic

  Raakesh

  1 Nov 2009 | 11:22 pm

  If you have ever wondered what more could you do to build higher quality landing pages for organic and paid (PPC) traffic, here is a 37 minute podcast that gives you one idea, after another. Whatever I talk about in this podcast has worked for me and most of it has come from hard, first hand, hands on experience. It talks about some tools and services out there that could help you get the results that you expect and also some techniques to get free traffic, as well as ways to build high quality inbound one way text links. This podcast covers tips, tricks, do's, don'ts, ideas, suggestions,…

• Google Listen Add Podcast

  Raakesh

  1 Nov 2009 | 8:47 pm

  Google Listen is only limited to Android users (as of Nov 1, 2009). The new app lets your Android phone (like my HTC G1), communicate with Google Podcast Directory and download / subscribe to Podcast Feeds. The good thing is that unlike other services offered by some cell phone manufacturers out there, Google Listen is not limited to just podcasts submitted to the directory by the podcast owners, rather it is added using Google's powerful web-based rank metrics, allowing a much much wider variety than the ones I just referred to. The interface of the Listen application is pretty straight…

• I unfollowed a lot of people on Twitter

  Raakesh

  29 Oct 2009 | 11:57 pm

  Since a few days I have been checking out my Twitter homepage and have not really been able to follow anyone literally. My Twitter homepage had become more like a Javascript Ticker. So I decided to unfollow quite a lot of heavy tweet'ers and added a saved search for them instead. This way I can look at their tweets when I want, and I can actually understand what one is saying, and also follow through on things that might interest me. While on my homepage, I still have some Tweets from people I communicate with on a regular basis. read more

• Special FTC Disclosure Special Report for Online Marketers

  Raakesh

  28 Oct 2009 | 5:24 pm

  The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is changing the way that marketing is done online - endorsements, testimonials, affiliate marketing, etc. Mike Young (Attorney and Counselor at Law), just created an easy-to-read special report that explains what has changed and how to deal with those changes in your online business ventures. If you have any questions contact me and I will get you the answers to your questions. If you are doing any marketing online, which includes operating a blog, promoting affiliate offers, or selling your own products, ebooks, etc, do read this report seriously as this has…

• 
  Learnivore!

• Episode 0.16.1 - off_github - revisiting v1.1.1 (Rubypulse - free)

  4 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm

  This is a recap of previous episode 0.16 off_github, this time showing the correct functioning of that tool. There were some complains that it is no good to show a failing command, so I rerecorded it. And, as the author already released an updated version of off_github, I can show you how it smoothly works on my PC.

• Styleize your Rails App with Themes (Teach Me To Code - free)

  3 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm

  Don't want to take the time to create a layout for your new Ruby on Rails application? Don't worry. Use the Themes plugin! In this screencast, I show you how to easily add a layout with built-in menus to your existing Rails application using only 1 line of code.

• Episode 0.16 - off_github (Rubypulse - free)

  2 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm

  "A simple tool which helps migrate your locally installed gems from github to gemcutter." - maxim

• Pickle with Cucumber (Railscasts - free)

  1 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm

  Pickle adds many convenient Cucumber steps for generating models. Also learn about table diffs in this episode.

• Episode 0.15 - Halloween 09 Special (Rubypulse - free)

  29 Oct 2009 | 5:00 pm

  "Ruby the Creepy Way." - aaalex

• 
  SHAZAML!

• Hidden Object: Episode 12 – Custom Mouse Cursor Behavior

  Mark Tucker

  27 Oct 2009 | 7:07 am

  This is episode 12 of Creating a Hidden Object Game is Silverlight 3. In this episode, we will create a behavior that allows us to set the shape of the mouse cursor to any Image or Path we desire. Let start this tutorial in Expression Design. Create a new document that is 25×25 pixels and on the single layer add the shapes shown: Export the document as a PNG making sure that both Transparency and Antialias are checked. If you don’t have a copy of Expression Design, you can use a vector graphics program like Inkscape. Add the image to the Visual Studio project and drag it onto the…

• Hidden Object: Episode 11 – Add Custom Shapes to the Particles Behavior

  Mark Tucker

  5 Oct 2009 | 5:05 pm

  This is episode 11 of Creating a Hidden Object Game is Silverlight 3. Growing up our family didn’t splurge on Lucky Charms cereal, but I remember the TV commercials with Lucky the leprechaun talking about all the fun marshmallow shapes: pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, green clovers, and blue diamonds. In later years other shapes appeared such as purple horseshoes, red balloons, rainbows, and pots of gold. What does this have to do with our hidden object game? Currently the ParticleControl creates only one shape. Circles. Wouldn’t it be great if you could specify the shape…

• Hidden Object: Episode 10 – Counting Items Found with Counter Triggers, Actions & a Behavior

  Mark Tucker

  4 Oct 2009 | 12:10 am

  In episode 9 of Creating a Hidden Object Game is Silverlight 3 we added additional screens to the game. In this episode, we will add the Win screen and a collection of triggers, actions, & behaviors that work with a global counter. The Win screen is shown after all 13 items have been clicked. What we need is an integer counter that subtracts one for each item clicked and when the count gets to zero change the state of the MainPage UserControl to show the screen. Similar to what we did in the last episode, create a new Canvas called winCanvas and position it to the left of the UserControl…

• Hidden Object: Episode 9 – Add the Splash, Menu & Options Screens

  Mark Tucker

  29 Sep 2009 | 4:55 pm

  This is episode 9 of Creating a Hidden Object Game is Silverlight 3. In the last episode we added background music. Now we will create a screen to set the music volume. While we are at it, we will create the splash and menu screens. When the game is finished, it will have a screen flow as follows:  Currently we have been working on the Game screen which in the project is a UserControl called MainPage.xaml. We are going to create the menu, options, and splash screens as Canvas objects that are off screen of MainPage and are at the bottom of the Objects tree (or top of the z-order) so they…

• Hidden Object: Episode 8 – Loop Game Music with a Behavior

  Mark Tucker

  28 Sep 2009 | 6:24 am

  In the last episode of Creating a Hidden Object Game is Silverlight 3 we finished off the magnifier feature. Now it is time to add some background music to the game and have it continually play. First off, we need to find some appropriate music. I did a search for royalty-free & public domain music and came across a site by Derek R. Audette that contained such music. On the site, I found a piece of music called “Combustible Coffee Pot” written & performed by Derek R. Audette – ©MMV(Socan). Derek’s own description of the music is: “Out of control drum…