We work hard to make sure that the videos on the GoogleDevelopers channel on Youtube are captioned, but when I/O added over a hundred hours of video content, we got a little behind. I'm happy to announce that we're finally caught up! Every English and Spanish video from I/O now has captions that you can turn on in YouTube.Didn't know we had captions? Just click to select captions from the menu in the lower right corner of the video player.Some caption and subtitle-related news: A group of volunteers from Russia used the translated.by software to crowdsource translation for Google Wave video…
Programming
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Google Code Blog
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Captions available for all Google I/O videos
20 Nov 2009 | 9:40 am -
The latest addition to Google's open source projects
18 Nov 2009 | 4:20 pmDid you know Google has released more than 300 open source projects to date? Yesterday, we announced the latest addition to Google's open source projects - YouTube Direct, a new tool that enables any developer to solicit video submissions, moderate and display them on their website, all powered by YouTube. We recognize the role that open source plays at Google and how it helps us create better applications and we try to give back to the community as much as possible.YouTube Direct was built on top of YouTube's public APIs and is designed to run on Google App Engine - Google's highly scalable… -
Welcome to Google Developer Relations, Don!
18 Nov 2009 | 10:38 amA couple days ago, Google welcomed Don Dodge to our Developer Relations team, where he joins us as a Developer Advocate working with developers, startups, and other Google Apps partners. We're expecting Don to be a fantastic addition to our team. He's already a prominent voice in the developer community, well-known and highly-regarded among entrepreneurs, technologists, and the media.In the TechCrunch post first announcing Don's availability, Michael Arrington wrote how Don, "makes a big effort to give young startups the attention they deserve. This is a guy who gives a heck of a lot more to… -
Go: A New Programming Language
10 Nov 2009 | 3:40 pmHave you heard about Go? We released a new, experimental systems programming language today. It is open source and we're excited about sharing it with the development community. For more information, check out the Google Open Source blog.By Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, Ken Thompson, Ian Taylor, Russ Cox, Jini Kim and Adam Langley - The Go Team -
Use compression to make the web faster
9 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pmEvery day, more than 99 human years are wasted because of uncompressed content. Although support for compression is a standard feature of all modern browsers, there are still many cases in which users of these browsers do not receive compressed content. This wastes bandwidth and slows down users' interactions with web pages.Uncompressed content hurts all users. For bandwidth-constrained users, it takes longer just to transfer the additional bits. For broadband connections, even though the bits are transferred quickly, it takes several round trips between client and server before the two can…
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Dzone
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Holy crap: JVM has coroutine/continuation/fiber etc.
20 Nov 2009 | 1:09 pmI have always wanted to have generator in Java. After all, Python have this feature, Ruby and C#(*) too. A generator is a way to define an iterator but instead of implementing hasNext()/next(), you just implement a method (here generate) and use the keyword yield (or here a method yield) to send value that will be returned by next(). -
Upgrading to Ubuntu 9.10
20 Nov 2009 | 12:59 pmThis document provides instructions and notes on upgrading to Ubuntu 9.10 (code name "Karmic Koala"), the most recent release of Ubuntu, released on the 29th of October 2009. -
Silent JDK Deployment on Windows
20 Nov 2009 | 12:11 pmAfter not finding the full set of silent install options by searching, I decided to hunt them down myself and posted a write-up on silently deploying JDK 6. -
PHP 5.3.1 is finally here!
20 Nov 2009 | 11:54 amA stable version of PHP 5.3.1 is finally here! Download link and links to view the release announcement, key changes and the full changelog within. -
What? You’re doing TDD!
20 Nov 2009 | 11:53 amI’ve always been distrustful by default with the “main way of thinking”. Which doesn’t mean that I systematically reject the opinion of the majority. But given the strong tendency of human beings towards laziness and our natural tendency to sheep-like behaviour, the faster something gets popular, the more I question it.
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Ajaxian » Front Page
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Full Frontal ‘09: Simon Willison on Server-Side Javascript and Node.js
20 Nov 2009 | 9:41 amSimon Willison snuck in a last-minute topic change, and is now going to give the server-side Javascript talk. The news of the past 24 hours is ChromeOS. For the first time in years, someone’s re-thinking how an OS should work. With Chrome, you turn on your computer and you’re in the browser. What’s really interesting is to contrast it to the introduction of the iPhone, where Apple’s apps used native APIs while they expected developers to write web apps running in the browser with limited abilities. Here, Google’s apps are using the same web… -
Full Frontal ‘09: Jake Archibald on Performance Optimisation
20 Nov 2009 | 9:11 amJake explains no-one likes waiting, and people are multi-threaded (except when they have to sneeze). Yet, we're stuck with a single-threaded language for the most part; and we still face the legacy of a DOM standard from another era (DOM Level 1 - 1997). This talk provides some optimisation tips, backed by Jake's cross-browser experiments. Jake's slides and research are online. Optimise Where it Matters Jake explains the importance of speeding things up where it really matters. Doug Crockford has pointed out that in Javascript, bitwise operations aren't close to the hardware, which stands in… -
Full Frontal ‘09: Todd Kloots on ARIA and Acessibility
20 Nov 2009 | 8:10 amTodd Kloots is talking accessibility and ARIA, with examples showing how YUI nicely supports these techniques. He explains how to improve in three areas: perception, usability, discoverability. Can We Do ARIA Today? Yes. Firefox and IE (he didn't say which version) have really good support for ARIA. And Opera, Chrome, and Safari. Likewise for the screenreaders - JAWS, Windows Eyes, NVDA - also have good support. An the libraries - YUI, Dojo, JQuery-UI - all have good support baked in, one of the benefits of using ARIA is automatic support. Improving Perception - ARIA and Screenreaders… -
Full Frontal ‘09: Stuart Langridge on HTML5 Features
20 Nov 2009 | 7:52 amStuart Langridge introduces us to some of the up-and-coming features we're getting with current and future browsers, a nice complement to Robert Nyman's talk, which covered the advanced features of "mainstream" (IE6-compatible) Javascript. After introducing the features that are there today, he also talks about how we can deal with the browser many of us are still having to support. The Goodies Here are some of the things we can look forward to. (Having been part of the large crowd who charged the pub across the road at lunch, I was a bit late getting back, so I missed one or two of these.)… -
Full Frontal ‘09: PPK on Mobile Quirks and Practices
20 Nov 2009 | 4:58 amPPK talks up the excitement of mobile web development, then brings the mood down a notch by listing the overwhelming array of browsers to be targeted! Quirksmode says it all. This talk is about quirks in mobile development, and some of the solutions out there. Mobile CSS Quirks So many platforms. Take just WebKit. You can't just say "WebKit" for example, because there's no webkit on mobile. There's iPhone Safari, Android WebKit, Bolt, Iris, different versions, etc. "If someone says my 'app should work in WebKit', laugh in his face. There are just too many versions of WebKit, so as PPK says…
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PHP.net releases
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PHP 5.3.1 released!
31 Dec 1969 | 4:00 pmThere is a new PHP release in town!
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PHP.net news & announcements
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PHP 5.3.1 Released!
19 Nov 2009 | 9:41 amThe PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.3.1. This release focuses on improving the stability of the PHP 5.3.x branch with over 100 bug fixes, some of which are security related. All users of PHP are encouraged to upgrade to this release. Security Enhancements and Fixes in PHP 5.3.1: Added "max_file_uploads" INI directive, which can be set to limit the number of file uploads per-request to 20 by default, to prevent possible DOS via temporary file exhaustion. Added missing sanity checks around exif processing. Fixed a safe_mode bypass in… -
PHP UK Conference 2010 Call For Papers
30 Oct 2009 | 6:19 amThe 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
21 Oct 2009 | 11:15 amWith 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
1 Oct 2009 | 12:19 pmOn 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
29 Sep 2009 | 10:20 amPHP 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…
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SOTC Recent Posts
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SOTC Episode 5 - What Does Marsellus Wallace Look Like?
1 Nov 2009 | 3:40 pmAfter 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
30 Oct 2009 | 6:38 amHere 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
21 Oct 2009 | 12:37 pmAs 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
16 Oct 2009 | 3:27 pmSo 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
9 Oct 2009 | 10:30 amThe 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
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Get the SQL Server 2008 R2 November CTP
19 Nov 2009 | 6:06 pmSQL Server 2008 R2 delivers several breakthrough capabilities that will enable your organization to scale database operations with confidence, improve IT and developer efficiency, and enable highly scalable and well-managed business intelligence on a self-service basis for your users. MSDN and TechNet subscribers can download the SQL Server 2008 R2 November CTP today. -
Learn: Windows 7 Multi-Touch Overview
19 Nov 2009 | 6:06 pmWatch Reed Townsend and Yochay Kiriaty as they explore multi-touch in Windows 7. They will cover basic out-of-the-box support for legacy applications, as well as for applications optimized for multi-touch, and explain the "Good, Better, and Best" programming model. -
Explore: Windows 7 Libraries - the User Experience
17 Nov 2009 | 9:00 amDavid Washington and Paul Gusmorino demonstrate the key enhancements in Windows 7 for finding and organizing your files. David and Paul show off the ways that the team has simplified the Windows Explorer, the new Libraries feature, which is a virtual collection of your music, photos, and video, wherever they may be, including on multiple machines. You'll also see how to use the Library pane to easily find and filter your data. -
Watch PDC09 Keynotes Live This Tuesday and Wednesday
17 Nov 2009 | 9:00 amWatch the PDC09 keynotes streaming live in Silverlight! Keynoters Ray Ozzie and Bob Muglia kick things off on November 17, and Scott Guthrie and Kurt DelBene will keynote on November 18. Keynotes start at 8:30 A.M. Pacific Time on both days. Don't miss this opportunity to hear about the future of the Microsoft developer platform directly from these technical leaders. As always, the PDC team has a few secret announcements up their sleeve, so tune in online and be among the first to get the news! -
New! Build More-Secure Applications with the Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) for Agile
13 Nov 2009 | 2:25 pmEmbrace lightweight software security practices with the Security Development Lifecycle for Agile Development, a streamlined approach that melds Agile methods and security.
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37signals Product Blog
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How To-Do list due dates saved the day for a Singapore company
20 Nov 2009 | 8:35 amAnol Bhattacharya, CEO of GetIT | Comms, a boutique outfit, based in Singapore providing interactive digital media solutions to hi-tech and telco companies, writes in: Recently Basecamp's To-Do list added in a new feature of mentioning due dates, and coincidentally just at the right time for us. Last Friday one of the project managers of our team had to rush to Seattle to attend to a Family emergency within 5 hours of notice. There are multiple very important projects ongoing and there was not enough time for a proper handover. Basecamp came to rescue! Quickly we jotted down all the To-Do's… -
Inc. magazine looks at how an organic produce farm in Indiana uses Basecamp
19 Nov 2009 | 8:02 am"How to Choose the Right Collaboration Software" [Inc.] discusses the emerging breed of low-cost tools, including Basecamp, that are making project collaboration much easier. "Companies have been looking for ways to make up for the overreliance on e-mail as a collaborative tool," says Jeffrey Mann, an analyst with Gartner. "Now we're seeing the evolution of tools that tackle everything e-mail is bad at -- like allowing users to follow a discussion, share files, monitor workflow, and get the latest status on tasks and projects." The article discusses Stranger's Hill Organics (see above photo),… -
Basecamp connects myows.com team members in Singapore and Cape Town
18 Nov 2009 | 8:51 am11 months ago, Max Guedy wrote to us detailing how Getting Real helped him create a new app. Recently, he wrote us again with details on how Basecamp helped him launch that app, myows.com. The tool is dedicated to providing a full suite of copyright solutions for designers, photographers, musicians, and anyone else who creates copyrightable work. Just like 37signals, we're a small team (4 people), but we all have our own agencies or practice to run. To make matters even better, one of our team member lives in Singapore (the developer), whereas the 3 others are in Cape Town, South Africa. -
New in Basecamp: An easier way to add 10 milestones at a time
17 Nov 2009 | 12:23 pmBasecamp has always had an "add 10 milestones at a time" feature, but the date picker wasn't the easiest to use. We had three pulldowns - one for year, one for month, and one for day. It worked, but it wasn't optimal. Today we launched a nice improvement we think you'll like. Now just click a "Pick a date" field and up pops a calendar. Click the day and it's set. That's all there is too it. Faster, easier, more contextual, and more fun to use. Thanks again for using Basecamp. -
The Basecamp outage / slowdown today
16 Nov 2009 | 2:42 pmToday Basecamp suffered the worst outage / slowdown that it has had in a very long time. We're very sorry that this disrupted your day. We know that you depend on Basecamp and any downtime, no matter how rare, is a serious problem. That's why we want to share all the details with you, so we can be as transparent as possible and you can trust that we're doing everything we can to prevent this from happening again. If you don't care about the technical details, the summary is that a server went down and our redundant backup server wasn't operational as fast as we…
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Signal vs. Noise
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I'm a tailor
20 Nov 2009 | 6:33 amWhen people ask me what I do all day I have a hard time summing it up. I design, I edit, I think, I review, I suggest, I teach. Some things I mess up, some things I fix up. But what I really do most of the time is trim, tuck, iron, cut, press, and fit. I’m a software tailor. And I’m starting to think that’s my perfect role. My team is incredible. I don’t need to tell them what to do. If there was a fantasy software league, I wouldn’t trade my team for anyone. But there are times during the development and design process where the things we make just don’t… -
Unicorns and projections
19 Nov 2009 | 7:53 am“Off the Chart” talks about how recent unemployment rate predictions turned out to be way off the mark. The reason: “Reality has produced numbers of its own.” And that’s the problem with projections. Reality is a terrible collaborator. No matter how much you try to work with it, it has a mind of its own. And it never listens to you. Plus, it’s easier to be a cheerleader than a doomsayer — especially when you have a vested interest in the outcome. That’s how people wind up in an overly optimistic fantasy world. No one ever submits a business plan… -
QUESTION: If you had to give it up, which subscription
18 Nov 2009 | 6:37 amIf you had to give it up, which subscription would you miss the most? -
Design Explorations: Basecamp To-dos with Due Dates
17 Nov 2009 | 11:32 amWe’ve just posted another article in our series of Design Explorations. This installment shows our process for adding a new feature to Basecamp: Add due dates to to-dos. We’re excited about this new feature and anxious to share this latest peek at our design process. Read the full Basecamp to-dos design exploration. -
[Podcast] Episode #2: Tech company valuations
17 Nov 2009 | 10:35 amDownload MP3 | Time: 24:10 Like this episode? Please share it with your friends: 37signals worth $100 billion? Start time: 0:37 The story behind the mock press release claiming 37signals is worth $100 billion. The press should be more critical in covering valuation stories. Eyeballs aren’t the only thing that matter. The valuation dance Start time: 8:45 Was the press release a shot at Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube? Why was the sale of Mint to Intuit disappointing? Where will the next great generation of companies come from if they keep selling early? Also, VC money is a time…
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MapQuest Developer Blog
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Time Dependent Routing and Path From Route added to Directions Service Beta
18 Nov 2009 | 6:00 amWe have two new features for the Directions Web Service Beta today. One of which is awesome and cool, and is rather obvious in what it does - That would be Time Dependent Routing. The second is incredibly powerful and complex, and is going to take a little time to explain, and that is Path From Route. Time Dependent Routing We've added new parameters to the Route function that let you tell us what time, and on what day, you want to start your directions. "Why would that matter?" I hear you ask. Well, the road network can change depending on the time of day. Sometimes a road is open, and… -
Web 2.0 Geocoding Service Launched!
12 Nov 2009 | 4:00 amToday we are very proud to announce that our new Geocoding Service has left Beta and has gone live to Production at www.mapquestapi.com/geocoding This is our third web service we have pushed to Beta, iterated, and then released to production, since we first pushed out the Beta of the Directions Web Service on July 20th. When you consider that we also have the Static Map Service as well as version 6 of the JavaScript and ActionScript SDKs in Beta, I think that is a rather incredible pace we are maintaining! I'm not much of one for flowery words, so I'll let the product speak for itself. The… -
A Ton of updates for Static Map Service and Geocoding in Beta
9 Nov 2009 | 8:00 amThe Geocoding and Static Map Service teams have provided another update with more feature enhancements and improvements. We hope you like them, try them, and find them useful. Please remember to provide feedback on the Beta Forums if you find the time. Ok, enough chit-chat! On with the features... More details on the features listed below are always found on the Developer Network Beta page Geocoding Service Delimited Text File Output We've added a new format to the geocoding service of outFormat=file. It can be used for geocoding, reverse geocoding, and batch geocoding. The response will be a… -
New MapQuest Map Style Added to JS and AS3 SDKs in Beta
29 Oct 2009 | 8:00 amYou 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
26 Oct 2009 | 11:00 pmNot 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…
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A List Apart
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On Web Typography
17 Nov 2009 | 12:00 amUntil now, chances are that if we dropped text onto a web page in a system font at a reasonable size, it was legible. But with many typefaces about to be freed for use on websites, choosing the right ones to complement a site's design will be far more challenging. Many faces to which we’ll soon have access were never meant for screen use, either because they’re aesthetically unsuitable or because they’re just plain illegible. Jason Santa Maria, a force behind improved type on the web, presents qualities and methods to keep in mind as we venture into the widening world of web type. -
Real Web Type in Real Web Context
17 Nov 2009 | 12:00 amWeb fonts are here. Now that browsers support real fonts in web pages and we can license complete typefaces for such use, it's time to think pragmatically about how to use real fonts in our web projects. Above all, we need to know how our type renders in screens, in web browsers. To that end, Tim Brown has created Web Font Specimen, a handy, free resource web designers and type designers can use to see how typefaces will look on the web. -
Can You Say That in English? Explaining UX Research to Clients
3 Nov 2009 | 1:00 amIt'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 amA 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.
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CFlex Aggregation of Macromedia Flex in the News
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SAP talent management FAQ recommends learning Flex
15 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pmBut also Java and maybe Rich Internet Application (RIA) approaches like Adobe Flex. Knowledge of Agile and Scrum methodologies a plus. ... -
NetXposure Releases NETXPOSURE 5.5
9 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pmLatest release of Digital Asset Management solution focuses on a rebuild of underlying technology resulting in significant performance enhancement NetXposure today announced the release of NETXPOSURE 5.5, the first major update to the fifth version of NetXposure?s Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution. Building on the success of the groundbreaking release of the fifth version of NetXposure?s DAM -- the first on the market built with an Adobe Flex user interface -- the NETXPOSURE 5.5 release focuses on enhanced performance of the underlying technology, sets a new standard for enterprise DAM… -
Rich internet applications come to the fore
9 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pmComputerWeekly.com<br> At the same time, Adobe was preparing what would become its framework for RIAs, Flex. Since then, Google and Sun have joined the game. ... -
Salesforce.com and Adobe Pact Ads Flash to the Cloud
9 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pmSilverlight is a strong competitor, but for the time being Flash/Flex is the leading choice for RIA implementations that go beyond AJAX. ... -
RIATest Version 3 Now Available
5 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pmWhat'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…
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Google Testing Blog
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Testing Chrome OS
19 Nov 2009 | 12:34 pmBy Julian HartyThe open-source launch of Chrome OS was announced today, and the source is available to download and build http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os. The entire project, including testing, is being open-sourced and made available for scrutiny and to help others to both contribute and learn from our experiences.The test engineering team haven't been idle - we're a small, international team and as a result we're having to be innovative in terms of our testing so we maximize our contribution to the project. We had two goals: to take care of short-term release quality and to plan an… -
Speaking Tonight at SASQAG
19 Nov 2009 | 10:17 amBy James A. WhittakerI am pleased to be speaking tonight at the local (and in my experience one of the finest) QA special interest group, SASQAG. My talk is based on my STAR keynote, but having just released Chrome OS today I am going to be detailing more of our process for making testing more conscious and deliberate. If you are local and want to attend go to www.sasqag.org for details. I hope to see you there. -
How to get Started with TDD
17 Nov 2009 | 1:51 amBy Miško HeveryBest way to learn TDD is to have someone show you while pairing with you. Short of that, I have set up an eclipse project for you where you can give it a try:hg clone https://bitbucket.org/misko/misko-hevery-blog/Open project blog/tdd/01_Calculator in Eclipse.It should be set up to run all tests every time you modify a file.You may have to change the path to java if you are not an Mac OS.Project -> Properties -> Builders -> Test -> EditChange location to your javaRight-click on Calculator.java -> Run As -> Java Application to run the calculatorYour mission is… -
The FedEx Tour
20 Oct 2009 | 3:48 pmBy 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
12 Oct 2009 | 1:08 pmBy 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…
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Ted On Flash
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Demos & MAX at Adobe - A new role
19 Nov 2009 | 9:24 amToday I start a new role at Adobe focused on keynote demos and our annual conference, Adobe MAX. As a developer, I love building software and as an evangelist, I especially love highlighting the great work the community creates. Flash, as a platform, stands apart in that every day new experiences are released that shape the future of software. Over the past 5 years, Flash has moved far beyond its animation roots and now powers applications, video, ads, and gaming making both the public and private web a better experience. My new role is focused on highlighting the work of our community,… -
Learning Fx4 from Scratch - Update 2
27 Oct 2009 | 9:03 amYesterday 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
20 Oct 2009 | 5:45 amWelcome 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
5 Oct 2009 | 2:10 pmHere 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
23 Sep 2009 | 9:39 amI 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:…
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Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen
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Our little team is growing - Welcome to Jon Galloway and Pete Brown
12 Nov 2009 | 1:54 pmJust about two years ago I joined Microsoft. I'm fortunate to work in a home office with a great team that I now lead. We work for the group at Microsoft that runs MSDN, TechNet, ASP.NET, Silverlight.NET, WindowsClient.NET, basically all the online education stuff. The giant group is called STO (Server & Tools Online) and our little group is "stoninja." That's our internal mailing alias. We create content for all of the sites above but we're also active members of the community. We listen and drive feedback back into the product group. We're not part of the product evangelism… -
Download Podcasts with Powershell
9 Nov 2009 | 3:38 pmA number of people have mentioned to me that they didn't realize that Powershell is included by default in Windows 7. If you haven't yet jumped on the Powershell bandwagon, this is a good time. Powershell 2 includes a bunch of cool features like remoting (kind of like SSH) as well as a visual IDE for writing, editing and interactively debugging Powershell scripts. Powershell great for system administration, but I mostly use it for quick and dirty "portable" apps that I don't feel like writing C#/VB for. Plus, I'm using .NET anyway, so it's all the same. I wanted to download all my… -
Herding Cats: Organize your Desktop Icons with Stardock Fences for Windows
8 Nov 2009 | 1:32 amThere are few issues that divide computer people like that thousand-year-old question: How many icons should you have on your desktop? Some folks say, "Load 'em up! Make those pixels work for you." Others say, "I like a fresh bowl desktop with no icons." Some folks find a spot in between with just My Computer and the Recycle Bin. For me, the desktop is my work space. It's where I live and breathe and it's in front of my face all the time. I want as much information on there as possible. If I wanted a picture of the beach, I'd live at the beach and look up from my keyboard. -
Oredev 2009 - LIVE (now recorded) Closing Panel Video
6 Nov 2009 | 4:46 pmI 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
5 Nov 2009 | 8:11 amI'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…
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The Register
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MySpace makes peace with Indies
20 Nov 2009 | 11:46 amMerlin deal at last MySpace Music has settled with one of its fiercest critics, Merlin, settling a 14-month standoff. MySpace - the social networking sensation of 2005 - launched a music portal in September last year, but only with the four major labels. Since MySpace had built its reputation on new independent bands, you can see why the snub hurt.…What is your recession sales strategy? -
Nvidia previews next-gen Fermi GPUs
20 Nov 2009 | 11:38 amThe supermodels of HPC: hot, and worth it SC09 Graphics chip maker and soon-to-be big-time HPC player Nvidia raised the curtain a little higher on its next-generation of graphics co-processors at the SC09 supercomputing trade show in Portland, Oregon, this week, and it is arguable that the GPU co-processors aimed at personal supers and massive clusters alike were the star of the show.…The power of collaboration within unified communications -
Potty-mouths charged for Comcast hijack
20 Nov 2009 | 11:18 amDestination '69 dick tard lane' The potty-mouthed hackers who hijacked Comcast's domain name for several hours last year were charged with intentionally damaging a protected computer system.…What is your recession sales strategy? -
Microsoft Silverlight - now with hidden Windows bias
20 Nov 2009 | 10:18 amSo much for cross-platform PDC Silverlight 4.0 was the big hit at Microsoft's Professional Developer Conference (PDC) this week. "I can see that Silverlight is the future of Windows client development" one attendee told me.…Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn't work -
Apple cult leader emails outside world
20 Nov 2009 | 10:16 am11 words from the Messiah's Jesus phone Apple cult leader Steve Jobs has communicated with the outside world.…Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn't work
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Flash Magazine
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AIR 2 and Flash Player 10.1 betas on Adobe Labs
16 Nov 2009 | 7:30 pmToday, Adobe released beta versions of their two major runtimes so that developers can test and play with them. Todays beta's are still missing a few of the features, but these will arrive soon. We talked to the senior product managers at Adobe ahead of the launch to see if we could find out more than what's known already such as the new Peer to Peer features. -
ActionScript 3 Development Task Contest (AS3DTC)
10 Nov 2009 | 11:23 pmIt's been a while since there was a fun and informal Actionscript contest as those that existed have kind of died out. Here's one with a twist! Adobe evangelist Mike Chambers worked on a piece of code this weekend and wondered how others would go about solving the same problem. Why not make a competition out of it? -
TAC interview - learn to organize a conference from the pro’s
12 Oct 2009 | 8:53 amThe 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!
5 Oct 2009 | 10:20 amAt 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
4 Oct 2009 | 11:37 pmAs 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.
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Joel on Software
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Upgrade your career
5 Nov 2009 | 5:34 amDo 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 pmMy 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 pmWhat 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 pmAdam 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 pmIt 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,…
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Life Beyond Code
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Wherever you are, you can make a difference
17 Nov 2009 | 3:33 pmTake a look at this cool video of a flight attendant on Southwest Airlines. Now, it’s hard to beat that for sure. Have a great day! ---Related Articles at Life Beyond Code:Ways to distinguish yourself – #118 Make a difference, however small it is…Difference between ordinary and extraordinaryDifference between a discovery engine and a search engineWays to distinguish yourself #106 – Increase investments in personal growth -
Thoughtfulness 101 – Robert Scoble
17 Nov 2009 | 2:29 pmI have written about thoughtfulness on this blog (1, 2, 3, 4) before. You don’t have to do groundbreaking things to be thoughtful – it can be little things but with a lot of care. Let me illustrate this with a simple example I heard from Robert Scoble (@scobleizer) on Twitter that Loic LeMeur (CEO of Seesmic) was switching the Seesmic platfrom from Adobe Air to Microsoft Silverlight. Being a semi-geek, I was curious to know more – especially the reason for the decision to switch. So, I sent a query to Robert to see if he could share more. Here is my tweet: Robert responded… -
Ways to Distinguish Yourself #206 – Thank Powerfully!
12 Nov 2009 | 12:57 amNote: Thanksgiving is coming soon but I wanted to share this way before that date. You will see why as you read the post. Everyone knows that an attitude of gratitude is important to grow. In fact, you might remember your parents telling you to be thankful to people that help you. Yes, I subscribe to the above views whole-heartedly. You are where you are today because of MANY people who helped you get here. It is easy to forget the people that helped you. Sometimes you might think most of your success is because you are smart and of course you did some get a little help here and there. In… -
Ways to Distinguish Yourself #205 – Dis-Engage When Your Work is Valued Less
9 Nov 2009 | 10:26 pmPhoto Courtesy: psyberartist on Flickr Marketplace is right most of the time. It will set the price for what you bring to the table – based on the supply and demand equations that exist (all the time) Smart people sometimes hit a roadblock when they don’t get what they truly deserve. What they don’t realize is that in many cases they are the ones to blame for that situation. Here is a typical scenario: As you become an expert, it takes you less time to complete a task in your area of expertise. As they grow their expertise in the area, the time takes keeps shrinking. Now,… -
Event: Thought Leadership 2.0
3 Nov 2009 | 11:10 amIf 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…
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Jon Udell
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SQL Azure “Vidalia”: Practical translucency
20 Nov 2009 | 9:36 amEver since Peter Wayner introduced me to the idea of a translucent database I’ve been thinking about the implications of this powerful idea. In a nutshell, the data in a translucent database service is opaque to the operator of the service, and visible only to sets of users who establish trust relationships. My 2002 review of Peter’s book summarizes his babysitter example: Imagine a web service that enables parents to find available babysitters. A compromise would disastrously reveal vulnerable households where parents are absent and teenage girls are present. Translucency, in… -
OData is grease to cut data friction
18 Nov 2009 | 5:47 amBack in 2007 I talked with Pablo Castro about Astoria, which I described as a way of making data readable and writeable by means of a RESTful interface. The technology has continued to move forward, and I’m now a heavy user of one of its implementations: the Azure table store. Yesterday at PDC we announced the proposed standardization of this approach as OData, which InfoQ nicely summarizes here. I’ll leave detailed analysis of the proposal, and the inevitable comparisons to Google’s GData, to others who are better qualified. Nowadays I’m mainly a developer building a… -
Talking with Gavin Bell about Building Social Web Applications
16 Nov 2009 | 8:55 amMy guest for this week’s Innovators show is Gavin Bell, author of Building Social Web Applications. A lot has changed in the decade since I wrote my own book on this topic. One constant, as we discuss in the podcast, is that we still reach for special terminology like computer-supported collaborative work or groupware or social software. That won’t be true forever. Sooner or later we’ll take for granted that all networked information systems augment us collectively as well as individually. Until then, though, it remains appropriate to speak of social web applications as… -
Where is the money going?
9 Nov 2009 | 7:08 amOver the weekend I was poking around in the recipient-reported data at recovery.gov. I filtered the New Hampshire spreadsheet down to items for my town, Keene, and was a bit surprised to find no descriptions in many cases. Here’s the breakdown: # of awards 25 # of awards with descriptions 05 20% # of awards without descriptions 20 80% $ of awards 10,940,770 $ of awards with descriptions 1,260,719 12% $ of awards without descriptions 9,680,053 88% In this case, the half-dozen largest awards aren’t described: award amount funding agency recipient description EE00161 2,601,788… -
Talking with Marco Barulli about zero-knowledge online password management
1 Nov 2009 | 11:51 pmA 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.
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Rands In Repose
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The Foamy Rules for Rabid Tools
2 Nov 2009 | 11:56 amThe 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
11 Oct 2009 | 11:14 pmOn 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
1 Oct 2009 | 9:24 pmMost 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
28 Sep 2009 | 10:16 pmIf 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
7 Sep 2009 | 3:39 pmIn 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…
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VITAMIN
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Future of Web Design Vimeo Competition Winner
14 Nov 2009 | 1:10 amThanks to everyone who took time to enter our Vimeo competition. We had a lot of fun watching the videos and seeing what you thought the Future of Web Design holds. After much deliberation, it was close, we all agreed that Tim Lum is the worthy winner of the free conference pass to next weeks Future of Web Design New York. We would also like to give a special mention to Adam Soffer for his cool guitar and vocal entry. Tim – please email keir[at]carsonified.com and I’ll let you know how you can collect your free conference pass. I hope you can make it. The Video – The Future… -
Future of Web Design Interview Roundup
12 Nov 2009 | 8:03 amOver the last couple of weeks we asked a number of speakers and workshop presenters from the upcoming Future of Web Design New York conference a few questions about their particular area of web design. We covered everything from WordPress, typography, jQuery, content strategy, HTML5, CSS3, Dribble and inspiration. If you missed one or need a recap here are the links: Elliot Jay Stocks on WordPress for Designers Dan Rubin on Web Typography Karl Swedberg on jQuery Steve Smith on HTML5 and CSS3 Dan Cederholm on Bulletproof Web Design, CSS3 and Dribbble Mike Kus on 3 Dimensional Web Design… -
Kristina Halvorson on Content Strategy for the Web
11 Nov 2009 | 7:37 amKristina Halvorson is the founder and president of Brain Traffic, a nationally-renowned agency specializing in content strategy and writing for websites. She regularly speaks to audiences around the world about how to deliver useful and usable content online. In this interview Kristina discusses her new book “Content Strategy for the Web“, the prevalence of short form content and the three biggest online content mistakes and how to avoid them. Editor’s Note: Kristina will be taking part in a panel discussion “The Long and Short of It” chaired by Liz Danzico at The… -
“Humanity: Epic FAIL” – Jon Skeet at Stack Overflow Dev Days London
10 Nov 2009 | 7:31 amIn this video from Stack Overflow Dev Days London, Jon Skeet (Stack Overflow’s most reputed user and Google engineer) and his sidekick “Tony the Pony” deliver a fun and entertaining session titled “Humanity: Epic FAIL”. In this 30 minute talk Jon looks at how humanity hasn’t made life easy for developers and questions the rationale (or lack of) behind timezones, string manipulation, dates and more. A full transcript is available complete with slides on Jon’s personal site. Note: The sound quality at the beginning of the video is not the best but does… -
Future of Web Design New York Vimeo Competition
10 Nov 2009 | 6:25 amCarsonified has teamed up with Vimeo to offer one lucky web designer a FREE conference pass to next weeks Future of Web Design conference in New York. To enter all you have to do is record a maximum of 30 seconds worth of video explaining what you think “the future of web design” is and then add it to the competition group. Our favourite entry will win a free conference pass to conference on November 17th in New York City. Check out the Vimeo blog post for full details.
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IBM developerWorks
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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.
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BASH Cures Cancer
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Temporarily Clearing Environment Variables
8 Nov 2009 | 8:41 amAfter a long break I have some more ideas…. Will be posting them soon. For now, I leave you with a command to clear your corrent environment: root@67 [~]# printenv | wc -l 26 root@67 [~]# env -i printenv | wc -l 0 This is very useful when you want to run a command ignoring any environment variables you have set. I use this command with curl nearly everyday to ignore the http_proxy environment variable I have set. Another, longer, option is: root@67 [~]# http_proxy="" curl .... I prefer env -i as its simpler. -
The best in command line xml: XMLStarlet
23 Jun 2008 | 9:32 pmQuite some time ago I wrote about using xsltproc to process xml on the command line. Thank fully someone pointed out XMLStarlet. I now use XMLStarlet almost every day. I work with a variety of REST based API’s gather information. XMLStartlet along with a simple for loop or xargs gives you an exceedingly powerful set of tools. Here is a quick introduction into the power of XMLStarlet. This is just a teaser as I cannot share the data I work with. However, you should be able to see the power of this tool. All the links from my RSS feed: $ curl -s 'http://bashcurescancer.com/rss/' | xml… -
Processing XML on the Command Line
24 Apr 2008 | 9:08 pmThe other day on the cURL email list, someone asked: Could someone please tell me (preferably with an example) of how I could parse and xml like the following: <?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”ISO-8859-1″ ?> <FileRetriever> <FileList> <File name=”AMERI08.D4860.ZIP” /> <File name=”DTCCRSF.D4861.ZIP” /> <File name=”DTGSS01.D4862.ZIP” /> <File name=”DTGSS02.D4863.ZIP” /> <File name=”DTGSS03.D4864.ZIP” / </FileList> </FileRetriever> This is not appropriate for… -
Do not close stderr
22 Apr 2008 | 9:25 pmA few years ago, I wrote a post commenting on how ugly this was: $ someprog 2>/dev/null I was nearly imploring the reader to close stderr: $ someprog 2>&- Some very knowledgeable anonymous commenter explained why that was a bad idea. At the time, I didn’t understand exactly what they were saying. As such, I deleted the post. Yesterday, for no particular reason, the implications of closing stderr popped into my head. In the shower no less. I wrote a simple little C program named do-not-close-stderr.c. It takes two parameters, a string you want written to a file and the file you… -
prepend to a file with sponge from moreutils
17 Apr 2008 | 12:37 pmA few weeks I wrote about a tool, which helps you easily prepend to a file. I submitted prepend to moreutils and Joey was kind enough to point out this could be done with `sponge’. sponge reads standard input and when done, writes it to a file: Probably the most general purpose tool in moreutils so far is sponge(1), which lets you do things like this: % sed "s/root/toor/" /etc/passwd | grep -v joey | sponge /etc/passwd Two days ago Joey released version 0.29 of moreutils including a patch by yours truly (with much help from Joey). sponge: Handle large data sizes by using a temp file…
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ScottGu's Blog
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November Conferences
2 Nov 2009 | 10:05 pmI’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)
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)
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)
22 Oct 2009 | 11:47 pmThis 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)
21 Oct 2009 | 12:50 amThis 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…
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Perlbuzz
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Perl gets modern community blogging platform at blogs.perl.org
20 Nov 2009 | 9:02 amIn a move of unparalleled beauty, Dave Cross and Aaron Crane have announced blogs.perl.org, a modern blogging platform for the Perl community. Go look. Enjoy the non-ugly color scheme. Marvel at the code syntax highlighting and ability to embed images. Navigate posts using thoughtful categories. A million thanks to Dave and Aaron for putting this together, and to Six Apart for the design. Links to feeds will be going up here on Perlbuzz as soon as I have time. -
Perlbuzz news roundup for 2009-11-17
17 Nov 2009 | 12:34 pmThese links are collected from the Perlbuzz Twitter feed. If you have suggestions for news bits, please mail me at andy@perlbuzz.com. Pod::Simple 3.09 hits the CPAN (justatheory.com) Strawberry Perl and the nightmare of installing Padre (use.perl.org) A busy month for masak in Perl 6 (use.perl.org) A productive week in Rakudo-land (use.perl.org) Perl one-liners explained part III: Calculations (catonmat.net) Handy one-liner to lowercase all filenames in a directory: ls | perl -lne'$x=lc;print qq{mv $_ $x}' | sh -x Use CPAN's toolchain to improve your code (use.perl.org) Future Perl snuck up… -
perl.org gets a beautiful upgrade
12 Nov 2009 | 12:27 pmRobert Spier writes To match the massive advances in Perl over the last few years, www.perl.org has been brought into the modern era. www.perl.org has been completely redesigned, making it clearer and easier to use. All the content has been reviewed and brought up-to-date to provide links and other helpful resources for both new and experienced Perl programmers. Thanks to www.foxtons.co.uk for donating time from Leo Lapworth, Stephen Morgan, and Cameron Richmond! Holy cow is it pretty. Thanks to those who made it happen! The download page is especially handy. -
The horrible bug your command line Perl program probably has
9 Nov 2009 | 7:10 amMost programmers know you have to check return values from system functions. Unless you're just starting out as a programmer, you know that this is bad: open( my $fh, '<', 'something.txt' ); while ( my $line = <$fh> ) { # do something with the input } If that open fails the program continues on. The call to readline will fail, return undef as if we're at the end of the file, and the user will be none the wiser. If you have use warnings on, you'll get a "readline() on closed filehandle", but that's not much help when you should be dying. Instead, you should be opening your file like… -
What editor/IDE do you use for Perl development?
21 Oct 2009 | 3:33 pmGabor 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.
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Knowing.NET
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Pirating Reputation in the Consulting Market
20 Nov 2009 | 8:52 amA cautionary tale from the iPhone market in which a successful app developer discovered that an unscrupulous development house included his product in their portfolio. I can attest that this happens. I have had direct experience with a component that, in retrospect, was almost certainly stolen and reverse-engineered. When confronted with irrefutable proof that an identical component was in the hands of a competitor, the Indian subcontracting company said “Wow! They must have stolen our component!” (There’s no proof they were lying, but the circumstantial evidence was… -
Astrophotography: Registax and Vado HD
19 Nov 2009 | 12:11 pmRegistax needs a VFW H264 compressor in order to process video from the Vado HD camera. After installing DTS x264 Vfw 01.22.2007 things seem to work. -
Mortgage Meltdown Financial Instrument is NP-Complete
18 Nov 2009 | 8:11 amComplex derivatives are “intractable” — you can’t tell if they’re being tampered with - Boing Boing. Determining if a “Collateralized Debt Obligation” was tampered with is a “densest subgraph” problem, which is NP-Complete. Which is a fine thing to depend a global economy on. -
Stellarvue Refractor Telescopes: Stellar Service (See What I Did There?)
17 Nov 2009 | 11:00 amI had put off buying a telescope my entire adult life because I knew that you had to spend a good amount of money for quality and that, when it comes to a hobby that revolves around fleeting glimpses of faint and fuzzy objects, you must have confidence in your equipment. But, I couldn’t forever ignore my easy access to one of the premier dark sky sites in the world. Once you’re resigned to spending enough money for a quality scope, there’s another tension: aperture versus convenience. On the one hand, Dobsonian-mount reflectors are inexpensive per inch of aperture. On the… -
Posting Ink to My Blog
16 Nov 2009 | 11:39 am
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jQuery Blog
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The Official jQuery Podcast - Episode 2 - Richard D. Worth
20 Nov 2009 | 7:10 amOn Wednesday night, Ralph Whitbeck and Elijah Manor recorded this weeks episode of the Official jQuery Podcast with this weeks guest Richard D. Worth, jQuery UI Release Manager. Our next live show will be recorded and streamed Wednesday December 2nd at 10PM EST on uStream with yayQuery co-host Paul Irish. You can also subscribe to the show via iTunes or via the RSS Feed. Welcome You are listening to the Official jQuery Podcast. A weekly discussion with a key member of the jQuery community along with a look at what’s happened this week, … in jQuery. Brought to you each week by your… -
Announcing the Official jQuery Podcast
13 Nov 2009 | 8:00 amOn Wednesday night, Ralph Whitbeck and Elijah Manor recorded the first of many weekly episodes that aim to interview key members of the jQuery Community while bringing you the top news from the past week. We will be recording and streaming the audio live each Wednesday night at 10PM EST on uStream. You can also subscribe to the show via iTunes or via the RSS Feed. Our guest this week was jQuery creator, John Resig. Future shows will have guests such as Richard D. Worth (jQuery UI Release Manager), Paul Irish (yayQuery podcast), Rey Bango (jQuery Evangelist), Ben Alman (jQuery Plugin… -
What Bug Needs to be Fixed for jQuery 1.4?
30 Oct 2009 | 12:39 pmWant 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
30 Oct 2009 | 12:29 pmIn 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
22 Oct 2009 | 6:00 amEnvironments 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 -…
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Channel 9
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Joe Stegman: Silverlight 4 - Out of Browser Evolves
19 Nov 2009 | 8:19 pmJoe Stegman, Director of Program Management on the Silverlight team, joins us to discuss Silverlight 4's Out of Browser improvements (OOB means you can run Silverlight applications on the desktop, outside of, well, the browser...). Of note, you can now interop with COM objects in SL4's OOB. We also touch on the the future of Silverlight and clearly define the distinctions/differences between Silverlight and WPF. When to use SL? When to use WPF? Enjoy. -
Wes Dyer and Stephen Toub: Rx and Px - Working Together
19 Nov 2009 | 1:56 pmReactive Extensions for .NET (Rx) released this week during PDC09. Rx uses Parallel Extensions for .NET (Px) for all of it's concurrent and parallel computing needs. How is it using Px, specifically? What's going on here and why? Stephen Toub, PM on the Px team, and Wes Dyer, developer on the Rx team, tell us all about this partnership the experience of collaborating on two very compatible technologies that, taken together, create something beautiful. Some many xs, so little time. Enjoy. -
C9 Lectures: Dr. Erik Meijer - Functional Programming Fundamentals Chapter 8 of 13
19 Nov 2009 | 10:55 amWe've kicked off C9 Lectures with a journey into the world of Functional Programming with functional language purist and high priest of the lambda calculus, Dr. Erik Meijer (you can thank Erik for many of the functional constructs that have shown up in languages like C# and VB.NET. When you use LINQ, thank Erik in addition to Anders). We will release a new chapter in this series every Thursday. In Chapter 8, Functional Parsers, it's all about parsing and parsers. A parser is a program that analyses a piece of text to determine its syntactic structure. In a functional language such as… -
SharePoint Feature and Package Designers in Visual Studio 2010
19 Nov 2009 | 10:06 amIn this interview I sit down with Lily Ma, a Program Manager on the Visual Studio Team building tools for SharePoint development. Lily shows off the new SharePoint feature and package designers in Visual Studio 2010 and how they make packaging up and deploying your SharePoint customizations easy. As she dives deeper into the tools, she also demonstrates the flexibility and control you have in specifying what features go in what packages across projects in your solution as well as how to modify the manifests to meet a variety of developer needs. Also if you missed it, check out Overview of… -
Outlook Social Connector for Outlook 2010
18 Nov 2009 | 5:20 pmOne of the new features we're announcing today at PDC is the Outlook Social Connector SDK. This is a new way to integrate social networking data into Office Outlook 2010. Too busy with the @Ch9Live show to tell you too much more but check out the video. :)
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TheServerSide.com: News
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Mule Data Integrator released for graphical data transformation
19 Nov 2009 | 9:27 amOne of the biggest challenges in implementing SOA is figuring out how to handle the data. Data can exist in relational databases and in various file formats. To address the issue, MuleSoft has released Mule Data Integrator. It includes an Eclipse-based designer that is fully integrated with Mule IDE. -
Jailer 3.2 Released: Database Subsetting Tool
19 Nov 2009 | 5:14 amThe Jailer crew announced the release of 3.2.Jailer which exports consistent, referentially intact row-sets from relational databases. -
OpenCL Standard Speeds Compute Intensive Applications
18 Nov 2009 | 9:13 pmThe OpenCL standard blurs the lines between writing code for processors, GPUs, and other types of hardware. It is poised for take-off with more products and supporters. -
Data-Driven webtest of Drupal using Grails
18 Nov 2009 | 11:32 amWait... Drupal is PHP based, why grails? Because it's easy and super fast to get things done. Grails takes just a couple of minutes to install, installation is a 3 step process: 1) extract 2) update path 3) set env variable. And once it's installed, it's nothing to create a grails app to do some testing. -
Apache Mahout 0.2 Released
18 Nov 2009 | 5:40 amApache Mahout 0.2 has been released and is now available for public download. Apache Mahout is a subproject of Apache Lucene with the goal of delivering scalable machine learning algorithm implementations under the Apache license.
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Java.net
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Bill Venners Interviews Stephen Colebourne on Closures in JDK 7
19 Nov 2009 | 9:26 pmBill Venners interviews Stephen Colebourne in Java To Get Closures in JDK 7: At the Devoxx conference in Antwerp, Belgium, Sun's Mark Reinhold announced that closures would be added to Java in JDK 7. In this interview, Stephen Colebourne, coauthor of the FCM closures proposal, gives his perspective on this surprise announcement. One year ago, Mark Reinhold, Principal Engineer at Sun Microsystems, announced At the Devoxx conference in Antwerp, Belgium that the next major release of Java, JDK 7, would not include closures. At the same conference this year, however, Reinhold announced in a… -
Joe Darcy: Project Coin: Milestone 5 Language Features in NetBeans
19 Nov 2009 | 9:19 pmJoe Darcy wrote about Project Coin: Milestone 5 Language Features in NetBeans: To go along with the language changes available in JDK 7 milestone 5, the NetBeans team has created a developer build of NetBeans supporting the same set of language changes, including improved integer literals, the diamond operator, and strings in switch. In addition to just accepting the new syntax, the NetBeans build has some deeper support too. For example, when auto-completing on a constructor with type arguments, the diamond operator is offered as a completion... Community: OpenJDK -
Stephen Chin: Devoxx University Slides
18 Nov 2009 | 4:30 pmJava Champion Stephen Chin has posted his Devoxx University Slides: My Devoxx university session yesterday was packed, which was awesome! It was 3 hours of hard-core JavaFX knowledge, and almost everyone stayed for the duration. Aaron Houston got a great shot of the venue (more on the Java Champions site). I posted my slides on SlideShare, so check it out when you get a chance. Special thanks to my co-authors, Jim, Weiqi, and Dean for help with the content. Community: Java Desktop
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The Daily WTF
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Error'd: Protocol Droid Processing
20 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am"As much as I detest Novell GroupWise," wrote Ben P, "it is reasuring to that they use the much-loved protocol droid to process commands." "This is the default selection on this contact form, D Traver Adolphus writes, "at least it takes some of the thought out of it." "This is a required orientation quiz at the University of Maryland," writes Ben Storer, "I can only hope that the meeting with the Director of Student Services can help resolve the difficulties with nothing." "This seems to have been… -
Introducing Bad Code Offsets
18 Nov 2009 | 7:00 amI have never written a bad line of code. When I tell people that, they often scoff and offer replies like “so you’re not a programmer then?” and “let me guess, you’re a coding deity or something?” Well let me say, I am a programmer and I am not Codethulu, but in the same manner that Al Gore can fly around the world in a private jet without polluting, I have negated my bad code footprint through the purchase of Bad Code Offsets. This is all made possible through the Alliance for Code Excellence, a group for which I am proud to be the chairman. Its charter… -
CodeSOD: modHmm
18 Nov 2009 | 6:00 am"I was put on a new Microsoft Access project recently," Stuart A writes, "and I've slowly been finding my way around the system as the need arises (read: as bugs are reported). As my eyes drifted over the numerous modules, one stopped me in my tracks. It was a module named 'modHmm'. I guessed the programmer was in a ponderous mood?. So naturally, I had a look inside..." Option Compare Database Option Explicit Global t1qq Global t2qq Global t3qq ... "The file started off as usual," Stuart continued, "Globally declared variables without types that were poorly… -
The Standard Way
17 Nov 2009 | 6:00 amMichael P. was feeling pretty tense – and really, who could blame him? Today was no ordinary day. He was in the hot seat, presenting to the Software Advisory Committee - a multi-disciplinary group responsible for rubber stamping any and all new production application installations at MegaBank. Much like being presented before a village's Council of Elders, if he received their blessing, he would no longer be considered among the ranks of MegaBank’s junior developers. Instead he would be shoulder-to-shoulder with the man developers in the company. His word would have weight. People… -
CodeSOD: For the Ease of Maintenance
16 Nov 2009 | 6:00 amRyan Thompson works on a project where all database queries had to go through "stored procedures". Now before you call me out on extraneous quotes or wonder, so what's wrong with stored procedures?, I'm not talking about those kind of stored procedures. I'm talking about "stored procedures" — i.e., the technique developed by Ryan's predecessors for the ease of maintenance. You see, in Ryan's world, there are hundreds of different procedures, each with a unique identifier such as FNACL0023 or ADUSR0012, all which are stored in a database table named…
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John Lam on Software
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Passing the torch
17 Nov 2009 | 12:59 pmI'm going to miss my first RubyConf since 2005. The IronRuby project is still going strong, and is in the capable hands of Jimmy Schementi. It's heading towards a 1.0 release (0.9.2 today), and Jimmy is going to lay out what that roadmap looks like at RubyConf on Friday. So what have I been up to? I've been a happy IronRuby user since December, and working on a fantastic new project. It really was one of those opportunities where I was in the right place at the right time with the right preparation.These days I'm spending a large chunk of my time building an awesome new team from scratch from… -
Dynamic Languages at TechEd 2009
18 May 2009 | 10:11 amDynamic languages on .NET are picking up momentum at this year's TechEd. Your typical TechEd attendee is a mainstream .NET developer, since this conference focuses on technologies that are shipping today (as opposed to futures conferences like the PDC). To speak more to this crowd, I focused on how they can make their existing .NET apps better by mixing in some end-user scripting. My talk was DTL332 if you're a TechEd attendee (not sure when/if the videos will open up to the general public). I showed how you can add Ruby and Python scripting to an existing app, and spent some time building… -
Disable that annoying beep on Thinkpads when resuming from Sleep
2 Jan 2009 | 4:32 pmIt’s under the Power Manager settings: -
Hello, 2009
1 Jan 2009 | 4:41 pmHappy New Year! It’s been a hectic holiday season here in the Pacific Northwest. We were snowed in over here for somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 days or so. I wanted to spend most of my time with family, but I’m sneaking away for a few hours today to prepare for the new year. I’m writing this post from my office in my new chair that I picked up from Plush over at the Redmond Town Center: No that’s not me :) It’s a fantastic chair. I wanted an alternative place to work that wasn’t just my desk (which is a great setup, but a bit of variety is a good thing). I got the fur cover… -
PDC 2008 Wrap-up
30 Oct 2008 | 5:08 pmAs usual, PDC 2008 was a great event. I had a chance to meet a lot of old friends (it’s been 7 years since I’ve been to a PDC- it attracts a certain crowd that only shows up there) and I’m happy to see that everyone’s doing well. My IronRuby talk was the first day of the conference. It was a crazy mixture of many, many demos (9 in all) which showed: - when and why you should create a new type in IronRuby using C# - how to write a Visual Studio plug-in using Ruby - how to build a unit test and mock object framework - how to integrate Ruby scripting into your existing C# application -…
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The Old New Thing
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The difference between assignment and attachment with ATL smart pointers
20 Nov 2009 | 7:00 amLast time, I presented a puzzle regarding a memory leak. Here's the relevant code fragment: CComPtr<IStream> pMemoryStream; CComPtr<IXmlReader> pReader; UINT nDepth = 0; //Open read-only input stream pMemoryStream = ::SHCreateMemStream(utf8Xml, cbUtf8Xml); The problem here is assigning the return value of SHCreateMemStream to a smart pointer instead of attaching it. The SHCreateMemStream function creates a memory stream and returns a pointer to it. That pointer has a reference count of one, in accordance with COM rules that a function which produces a reference calls AddRef, and… -
We're using a smart pointer, so we can't possibly be the source of the leak
19 Nov 2009 | 7:00 amA customer reported that there was a leak in the shell, and they included the output from Application Verifier as proof. And yup, the memory that was leaked was in fact allocated by the shell: VERIFIER STOP 00000900 : pid 0x3A4: A heap allocation was leaked. 497D0FC0 : Address of the leaked allocation. 002DB580 : Adress to the allocation stack trace. 0D65CFE8 : Address of the owner dll name. 6F560000 : Base of the owner dll. 1: kd> du 0D65CFE8 0d65cfe8 "SHLWAPI.dll" 1: kd> !heap -p -a 497D0FC0 ... ntdll!RtlpAllocateHeap+0x0003f236 ntdll!RtlAllocateHeap+0x0000014f… -
News flash: Healthy people live longer
18 Nov 2009 | 7:00 amResearchers have determined that people in good physical condition live longer. Who'd'a thunk it? -
How do I move the Windows.edb and other search index files?
18 Nov 2009 | 7:00 amNothing profound today, just a little tip. My customer is looking out for a way to change the location of the windows.edb file to another (larger) drive. From the Indexing Options Control Panel, click Advanced, and then under Index location, click Select new. -
We found the author of Notepad, sorry you didn't go to the award ceremony
17 Nov 2009 | 7:00 amI've received independent confirmations as to the authorship of Notepad, so I'm inclined to believe it. Sorry you didn't get to go to the award ceremony. The original author of Notepad also served as the development manager for Windows 95. His job was to herd the cats that made up the programmers who worked on Windows 95, a job which you can imagine falls into the "not easy" category. After Windows 95, he retired from the software industry and became a high school science teacher. At a social event some years later, I met him again and asked about the transition from software…
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Lambda
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Scratch: Programming for All
19 Nov 2009 | 3:12 amMitchel Resnick, John Maloney, Andrés Monroy Hernández, Natalie Rusk, Evelyn Eastmond, Karen Brennan, Amon Millner, Eric Rosenbaum, Jay Silver, Brian Silverman, Yasmin Kafai, Scratch: Programming for All, Communications of the ACM, vol. 52, no. 11, November 2009. When Moshe Vardi, Editor-in-Chief of CACM, invited us to submit an article about Scratch, he shared the story of how he learned about Scratch: A couple of days ago, a colleague of mine (CS faculty) told me how she tried to get her 10-year-old daughter interested in programming, and the only thing that appealed to her daughter… -
Bytecodes meet Combinators: invokedynamic on the JVM
13 Nov 2009 | 5:16 pmBytecodes meet Combinators: invokedynamic on the JVM. John Rose. VMIL'09. The Java Virtual Machine (JVM) has been widely adopted in part because of its classfile format, which is portable, compact, modular, verifiable, and reasonably easy to work with. However, it was designed for just one language—Java—and so when it is used to express programs in other source languages, there are often “pain points” which retard both development and execution. The most salient pain points show up at a familiar place, the method call site. To generalize method calls on the JVM, the JSR 292 Expert… -
Go or Unladen Swallow?
10 Nov 2009 | 3:55 pmGo is a new programming language to come out of google and this thread on Google discouraging python internally for new projects seems more than just coincidence. Go is an attempt to combine the ease of programming of an interpreted, dynamically typed language with the efficiency and safety of a statically typed, compiled language. By combining dynamic features, safety, garbage collection and efficiency in a single language and environment, Go claims to remove the reasons why programmers end up building systems using multiple languages. A brief look at Go shows strong C origins with nice… -
Scheduled downtime
9 Nov 2009 | 6:06 pmLtU will be taken offline for some time tomorrow (Tuesday 9th) due to a data center move. The downtime could range from a few minutes to a few hours. The exact time this will occur is unknown, but you'll be able to tell because LtU will be unreachable. :-) -
State of the art C compiler optimization tricks
6 Nov 2009 | 11:29 amA 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…
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cssplay.co.uk
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A peculiar IE bug that allows irregular image maps with PNG images
18 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pmA method of creating irregular shaped image maps with ease exploiting an odd effect when using Microsofts AlphaImageLoader to render background PNG images. Only for IE though. -
Menu link text, png image replacement with rollover that degrades well with images off etc..
17 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pmA method of replacing menu link text with rollover png images that works in IE6 and also degrades well when images are of and/or CSS is off. -
A CSS gallery by numbers.
9 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pmA CSS slide show using numbers with a hover/click state but with the controls only visible when reqired. -
A dropdown menu with current page override.
1 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pmA dropdown menu with current page styling and the ability to override the current page style when hovering other items. -
A CSS image map menu.
31 Oct 2009 | 5:00 pmA CSS dropdown menu using an image map for the top level items with a rollover state, using just two images.
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Coding Horror
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Buy Bad Code Offsets Today!
19 Nov 2009 | 5:08 amLet's face it: we all write bad code. But not every programmer does something about the bad code they're polluting the world with, day in and day out. There's a whole universe of possibilities: Follow the instructions on the paint can Become a software apprentice Get a coding buddy Practice the fundamentals A program of effortful study Participate in the community to sharpen your saw But that's a lot of work. Really freaking hard work! Wouldn't it be nice if you could do something a bit simpler and easier to, just … say … offset the bad code you're producing? Well, now you can… -
Parsing Html The Cthulhu Way
15 Nov 2009 | 11:59 pmAmong programmers of any experience, it is generally regarded as A Bad Ideatm to attempt to parse HTML with regular expressions. How bad of an idea? It apparently drove one Stack Overflow user to the brink of madness: You can't parse [X]HTML with regex. Because HTML can't be parsed by regex. Regex is not a tool that can be used to correctly parse HTML. As I have answered in HTML-and-regex questions here so many times before, the use of regex will not allow you to consume HTML. Regular expressions are a tool that is insufficiently sophisticated to understand the constructs employed by HTML. -
Whitespace: The Silent Killer
9 Nov 2009 | 12:34 amEver have one of those days where everything you check into source control is wrong? Also, how exactly is that day is different from any other? But seriously. Code that is visible is code that can be wrong. No surprise there. But did you know that even the code you can't see may be wrong, too? These are the questions that drive young programmers to madness. Take this perfectly innocent code, for example. Looks fine, doesn't it? But hold on. Wait a second. Let's take another, closer look. OH. MY. GOD! If you're not a programmer, you may be looking at these two images and wondering what the big… -
Preserving Our Digital Pre-History
5 Nov 2009 | 4:33 amI'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
3 Nov 2009 | 1:07 amThat 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…
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ASP.NET News
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Microsoft Donates the ASP.NET Ajax Library Project to the CodePlex Foundation
17 Nov 2009 | 9:01 pmThe CodePlex Foundation has announced the formation of the ASP.NET Open Source Gallery and the acceptance of the ASP.NET Ajax Library as the first project in the Foundation. The ASP.NET Ajax Library consolidates ASP.NET Ajax and the Ajax Control Toolkit into a single open source project making it easy for developers to use the Ajax programming model in their Websites and Web Applications. For more information visit the ASP.NET Ajax Library project site. -
Download Silverlight 4 Beta Today!
17 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pmAt PDC09 Silverlight 4 Beta was unveiled with numerous new features, including support for webcam, printing, and trusted application support. Find out more and download the beta today. -
ASP.NET MVC 2 Beta Released
16 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pmASP.NET MVC is a free, fully supported framework that enables developers to quickly build standards-based, SEO-friendly Web sites by offering complete control over the HTML and URLs. ASP.NET MVC 2 Beta introduces improved Visual Studio tooling support, extensible client validation and lots of other features that help developers build Web sites and applications faster. Visit our ASP.NET MVC section to learn more and download ASP.NET MVC 2 Beta today. -
Eleven New "Quick Hit" Videos on ASP.NET 4!
15 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pmWatch Joe Stagner's continuing series of ASP.NET 4 "Quick Hit" videos, and learn the new features of ASP.NET 4! -
Fourteen New "Quick Hit" Videos on ASP.NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010!
10 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pmMicrosoft's Joe Stagner continues his series of ASP.NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010 "Quick Hits" videos. Watch them today and learn the new features of ASP.NET 4 and VS2010!
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Martin Fowler's Bliki
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DslBookRoadmap
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
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
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
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
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…
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Articles, Opinions & Lab - MIX Online
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Gestalt Grows Up
20 Nov 2009 | 11:34 amLast week, we discussed the fact that Microsoft invests heavily in both HTML5 and Silverlight, two technologies that other companies would have you believe are mortally opposed. Our commitment to both was underscored this week by our announcements about IE9 and Silverlight 4. When we launched Gestalt beta less than 4 months ago, our goal was to demonstrate a really simple idea: that a proprietary plugin like Silverlight complements and advances the standards-based web. With today’s launch of Gestalt 1.0 and the first few widgets in the Gestalt Widgets Pack, I’d like to drill… -
Introducing Gestalt 1.0 and the Gestalt Widget Pack
20 Nov 2009 | 11:04 amA few months ago, we released Gestalt beta as a MIX Online lab. Gestalt began as an exploration—a way to bring Ruby and Python to the web browser. Today, we’re delighted to announce that Gestalt has been updated to version 1.0. It's now part of IronRuby 1.0 and IronPython. The IronRuby team has made a number of much-needed improvements to Gestalt. In addition these changes, we’re releasing a handful of widgets that we built using Gestalt. Learn more about them, here. What is Gestalt? Gestalt allows you to write web applications in Ruby or Python + XAML in your HTML… -
JSON-P: An Elegant Hack (And Another Hack: Creating a JSON-P Service with the WCF REST Starter Kit!)
16 Nov 2009 | 1:30 pmI'm working on some prototyping for an upcoming Mix Online prototype (a bit recursive, no?). My prototype provides a service with a REST interface, which has a few methods that send data via JSON and XML. I'm using the WCF REST Starter Kit (http://www.asp.net/downloads/starter-kits/wcf-rest/) to get a REST service up and running quickly, and using the UriTemplate syntax to make my REST service nice and Web 2.0-like. It's working out wonderfully. Check out the Starter Kit and its excellent supporting documentation here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee391967.aspx. The Cross… -
Meetings Suck
12 Nov 2009 | 11:29 amIs it just me, or has the culture around meetings in the workplace spun out of control? Meetings are like a plague at large companies like Microsoft, and I've just about had it. I'm constantly holding back my twitching index finger from clicking "Decline" when someone turns an ongoing email thread into a meeting invite. Cornering people in a room in front of a whiteboard isn't going to solve the problem. That’s because meetings don't solve problems — people do. And they all do it differently. Solution vs. Consensus A meeting is supposed to facilitate a solution. Maybe even the "best"… -
HTML5 vs. Silverlight: Which Will Win?
10 Nov 2009 | 11:26 amEvery now and then, someone asks me, "Which technology will win: HTML5 or Silverlight?", or "What is Silverlight's strategy to compete with HTML5?". I always have to take a deep breath before responding, because these questions presuppose something that doesn't make any sense to me. It's like asking a tool store owner, "Which will win, hammers or screwdrivers?", or "How will you prevent hammers from making screwdrivers obsolete?" Black-and-white Thinking Some important folks in the industry have argued that HTML5 is a Silverlight-killer, or that Silverlight exists to prevent HTML from…
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Yahoo! User Interface Blog
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#followfriday: YUI Developers on Twitter
20 Nov 2009 | 12:09 pmThe @YUILibrary account on Twitter is a good information source for those of us who follow the project. Many of the individual developers who write YUI code every day are now on the service as well, and I wanted to gather all those accounts together in a single post for the sake of convenience. Here’s the formal list, which you can follow as a group, and here are the individual accounts: @admo: Adam Moore is one of the original YUI engineers; among many other things, he has written the YUI Event Utility, YUI Doc, and the original version of the YUI PHP Loader. @allenr: Allen Rabinovich… -
YUI Theater — Isaac Schlueter: “Solving Problems with YUI 3″
20 Nov 2009 | 9:52 amIsaac Schlueter (@izs) is developing the YUI 3 version of AutoComplete. In this YUICONF 2009 session, “Solving Problems with YUI 3,” he shows you how he’s working with the core YUI 3 toolkit to address the various challenges inherent in developing a complex widget. 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 is for iPods, iPhones, and other handheld devices. Download video (m4v)… -
Using YUI 2 and YUI 3 Together: Even Easier with Caridy’s Wrapper Utility
19 Nov 2009 | 12:53 pmThe YUI 3 Gallery got an interesting new addition today: Caridy Patino Mayea’s YUI 2 Wrapper Utility. Wrapper allows you to pull in YUI 2 modules from YUI 3 use() statements. Check out Caridy’s documentation for the Wrapper here. How easy? Here’s a full example. All that we start with is the 6.2KB (gzip) YUI 3 seed file; Caridy’s Wrapper and the built-in YUI 3 Loader take care of the rest: <script type="text/javascript" src="http://yui.yahooapis.com/combo?3.0.0/build/yui/yui-min.js"></script> <div id="demo" class="yui-navset"> <ul… -
Implementation Focus: OCLC/WorldCat
19 Nov 2009 | 10:33 amFiz Mohamed has worked for OCLC since 2004 where he’s a senior UI/UX (accessible) designer/developer for a number of high profile products and is responsible for a UI Cookbook/Library. A wealth of commercial freelance experience since 1993 has resulted in a wide range of technical and graphical skills. He lead the UI design for the launch of Cinema.com and also was the UI/UX designer for the US National Archives & Records Administration ARC project. Here at OCLC — a worldwide non-profit library cooperative that provides web visibility for library catalogues around the world… -
YUI Theater — Reid Burke: “Building YAP Applications with YUI”
19 Nov 2009 | 9:40 amThe Yahoo! Application Platform (YAP) allows you to write programs that run on the Yahoo! network — on the Yahoo! home page, My Yahoo!, and beyond. Reid Burke (@reid) of the YAP team came to YUICONF 2009 to talk not only about YAP but about how you can use YUI 2 within your YAP applications (we wrote about this on YUIBlog not long ago). 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 is for iPods,…
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Ruby Inside
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5 Top Ruby and Rails Jobs for November 2009
19 Nov 2009 | 10:49 pmLooking for a Ruby or Rails job in this economy? They're still there! They seem to be getting posted daily on jobs.rubynow.com but we've got 5 of our own that have come in via the Ruby Inside jobs board. If you want to post a job to our job board check out our new Post A Job page. It explains it all. It's $249 for 60 days of exposure with a link on all Ruby Inside and Rails Inside pages, exposure through Simply Hired, and inclusion on a post like this that goes out to all 22,000 subscribers. Most ads get 1-2,000 direct views during their run (and linked from about 240,000 pageviews on our… -
MacRuby 0.5 Beta 2: AOT Compilation, Rack & Sinatra Support, And More
18 Nov 2009 | 7:00 amMacRuby, a port of Ruby 1.9 to the Mac OS X Objective C common runtime, is today one step closer to a production-ready Ruby implementation with the release of beta 2 of MacRuby 0.5. MacRuby 0.5 has been highly anticipated since it was first mentioned back in March because it promises significant performance improvements, a new LLVM based virtual machine (replacing YARV), and significant compatibility improvements and bug fixes. Even still at this beta stage, 0.5 delivers on these promises. New in MacRuby 0.5 so far: rdoc and ri now work - thanks to compatibility bug fixes Rack and Sinatra… -
Torquebox: An All-In-One Java/JBoss Powered Ruby Webapp Platform
11 Nov 2009 | 3:43 pmIn the past two years we've seen a number of changes in the world of Ruby webapp deployment, but have you heard of Torquebox? Built upon the Red Hat Inc. JBoss middleware, Torquebox is an enterprise-grade application server that provides scale-oriented services to your Ruby webapps, including turn-key clustering. With its latest release, Torquebox supports all Rack-based Ruby frameworks. Torquebox comes with job scheduling and asynchronous task scheduling out of the box (no extra installs necessary), and while I've grown fond of RabbitMQ, the ease of using the built-in JMS (Java Message… -
Mail: An All New Ruby E-mail Library
11 Nov 2009 | 7:02 amTo date, the main ways to send e-mails from Ruby have been Net::SMTP, TMail, and Rails' ActionMailer (which uses TMail). Now, however, there's a fourth option, the simply named "mail" by Mikel Lindsaar. Mail is a new pure Ruby library designed to handle the generation, parsing, and sending of e-mail in a "Rubyesque" manner. Both the sending and receiving e-mails can be handled through the library and, where necessary, Mail proxies methods from libraries like Net::SMTP and Net::POP3. Ruby 1.9 support has been built in from day one so dealing with different text encodings in your e-mails is… -
Interesting Ruby Tidbits That Don’t Need Separate Posts #29
9 Nov 2009 | 7:09 pmWelcome to the latest installment in the series of compilation posts summarizing some of my latest findings in the world of all things Ruby. Let's tackle those links.. Alchemist: Easy Unit Conversion in Ruby Alchemist is a new Ruby library that aims to take the pain out of performing translation with day to day units, such as miles, kilograms, kelvin, meters, and becquerels. There are a few ways you can perform conversions such as explicitly with a method: 8.meters.to.miles or inline: 10.kilometers + 1.mile. The library's source code is quite something to look at - there are units I've never…
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LoGeek's software blog
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Using JRuby to prototype VST plugins
17 Nov 2009 | 2:07 pmIn this article I’ll present some bits of the work we’ve been doing daniel309 (author of jVSTwRapper) and I, around the topic: is it possible to use Ruby to make it easier to prototype VST plugins? It looks like yes – here’s the most simple example: class RubyGain < OpazPlug plugin "RubyGain", "Opaz", "LoGeek" can_do "1in1out", "plugAsChannelInsert", "plugAsSend" unique_id "RGaN" param :gain, "Gain", 1.0, "dB" def process(inputs, outputs, sampleFrames) inBuffer, outBuffer = inputs[0], outputs[0] for i in (0..sampleFrames-1) outBuffer[i] = inBuffer[i] * gain end end end We’ve been… -
Introducing Learnivore.com
14 Sep 2009 | 5:37 pmLearnivore.com is a side-project I’ve been working on during the past few months. It aggregates screencasts from a variety of Ruby/Rails publishers, like PragProgs, RailsCast or PeepCode for instance. It’s possible to filter between free and paid items, search in full-text, filter by tag or publisher (and later on by freshness). It has a RSS feed and pushes updates (manually so far) on @learnivore. I hope you’ll find this side-project useful! (suggestions welcome). Looking back Working on this project on the side has been an amazingly rewarding learning experience. It also brought me… -
How to create small, unique tokens in Ruby
2 Jul 2009 | 3:09 amA while back I was looking for a way to generate short unique tokens to be used as authorization tokens in urls. I did some research and asked on ruby-talk. Here’s a summary of what I found. Note that most of these algorithms can be translated to C#, Java, IronRuby/JRuby or your language and platform of choice. My choice: Dave Bass’s rand().to_s() trick Dave Bass proposed this which I picked up for my implementation (here for an 8-chars token): >> rand(36**8).to_s(36) => "uur0cj2h" The result can be used as an url; pretty neat. It relies on the ability of Fixnum to translate… -
Detecting Which Ruby Interpreter is Running (JRuby, IronRuby)
4 Mar 2009 | 2:44 amI’m currently using a mix of Ruby interpreters for building a system. For instance, I use JRuby for Celerity, IronRuby for Windows Forms (on Mono) and MRI for other things. To ensure I don’t mess things up, I came up with some tiny guards to get a clear message when I’m not using the interpreter I should be using. I’m sharing these here in case it’s useful to someone else. # JRuby abort $0 + " requires JRuby" unless defined?(RUBY_ENGINE) && RUBY_ENGINE == "jruby" # IronRuby abort($0 + " requires IronRuby") unless defined?(RUBY_ENGINE) && RUBY_ENGINE == "ironruby" Note that… -
How to create an empty Rails Edge application
28 Jan 2009 | 2:01 pmI’ve been looking for this one a bit, so I thought I would share it here. As I wanted to start using the Rails 2.3+ application template feature, I thought I would create a script that is able to create an empty Rails edge application. I found most of the required information here. Here it is packaged as a reusable ruby script: #!/usr/local/bin/ruby require 'fileutils' def launch(cmd); puts cmd; throw "Error!" unless system(cmd); end abort "Syntax: my_rails app_name" unless (app_name = ARGV.first) abort "Folder #{app_name} already there! Remove it first." if File.exists?(app_name) launch…
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Channel 9
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Joe Stegman: Silverlight 4 - Out of Browser Evolves
19 Nov 2009 | 8:19 pmJoe Stegman, Director of Program Management on the Silverlight team, joins us to discuss Silverlight 4's Out of Browser improvements (OOB means you can run Silverlight applications on the desktop, outside of, well, the browser...). Of note, you can now interop with COM objects in SL4's OOB. We also touch on the the future of Silverlight and clearly define the distinctions/differences between Silverlight and WPF. When to use SL? When to use WPF? Enjoy. -
Wes Dyer and Stephen Toub: Rx and Px - Working Together
19 Nov 2009 | 1:56 pmReactive Extensions for .NET (Rx) released this week during PDC09. Rx uses Parallel Extensions for .NET (Px) for all of it's concurrent and parallel computing needs. How is it using Px, specifically? What's going on here and why? Stephen Toub, PM on the Px team, and Wes Dyer, developer on the Rx team, tell us all about this partnership the experience of collaborating on two very compatible technologies that, taken together, create something beautiful. Some many xs, so little time. Enjoy. -
C9 Lectures: Dr. Erik Meijer - Functional Programming Fundamentals Chapter 8 of 13
19 Nov 2009 | 10:55 amWe've kicked off C9 Lectures with a journey into the world of Functional Programming with functional language purist and high priest of the lambda calculus, Dr. Erik Meijer (you can thank Erik for many of the functional constructs that have shown up in languages like C# and VB.NET. When you use LINQ, thank Erik in addition to Anders). We will release a new chapter in this series every Thursday. In Chapter 8, Functional Parsers, it's all about parsing and parsers. A parser is a program that analyses a piece of text to determine its syntactic structure. In a functional language such as… -
SharePoint Feature and Package Designers in Visual Studio 2010
19 Nov 2009 | 10:06 amIn this interview I sit down with Lily Ma, a Program Manager on the Visual Studio Team building tools for SharePoint development. Lily shows off the new SharePoint feature and package designers in Visual Studio 2010 and how they make packaging up and deploying your SharePoint customizations easy. As she dives deeper into the tools, she also demonstrates the flexibility and control you have in specifying what features go in what packages across projects in your solution as well as how to modify the manifests to meet a variety of developer needs. Also if you missed it, check out Overview of… -
Outlook Social Connector for Outlook 2010
18 Nov 2009 | 5:20 pmOne of the new features we're announcing today at PDC is the Outlook Social Connector SDK. This is a new way to integrate social networking data into Office Outlook 2010. Too busy with the @Ch9Live show to tell you too much more but check out the video. :)
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Paul Graham: Essays
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Apple's Mistake
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What Startups Are Really Like
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Persuade xor Discover
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Post-Medium Publishing
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The List of N Things
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CodePlex
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CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, November 20, 2009
20 Nov 2009 | 11:49 amCodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, November 20, 2009New ProjectsAmazon S3 for Umbraco: This is a project that will allow you to connect to your AmazonS3 via the Umbraco CMS and allow you to select your files and add them to your conte...Base Conversion: This project is a sample of how to produce decimal to base N conversions using a generic class and a custom character set for the conversion. The ...BSC: balanced scorecardDataTableProxy: DataTableProxy<T> makes it easy to turn your IEnumerable<T> into a Data Table with whatever custom set of columns you want. Simply… -
CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 19, 2009
19 Nov 2009 | 11:51 amCodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, November 19, 2009New ProjectsASP.NET Ajax Library: The ASP.NET Ajax Library enables you to build database-driven Web applications that run entirely in the Web browser. The library supports client co...CIM503 - Recruitment Agency Project: RecruitmentAgency demonstrates a system to enter cvs online. It is an MVC .NET project written in C#. Sorry, it doesn't work yet. :(CloudDrive: Utility to map windows drives to different cloud hosting services. Crunchbase Grabber: This is code that will scrape the crunchbase.com api and pull down company… -
CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, November 18, 2009
18 Nov 2009 | 12:02 pmCodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, November 18, 2009New Projects.NET Services SDK for PHP Developers: .NET Services SDK for PHP DevelopersAdrian's 人人网相册下载工具: 用于批量下载人人网相册的小工具。A photo album batch downloader utility for RenRen.comAdventureWorksLT 2008 Sample Database Script: This is a SQL Script for AdventureWorksLT 2008 Database which is provided by Microsoft. I'm providing this sql script as if somebody wants… -
CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, November 17, 2009
17 Nov 2009 | 12:16 pmCodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, November 17, 2009New ProjectsAdvance-Guard: ADVANCE-GUARD Project is a fully object oriented game engine development effort using C# and Microsoft.Net platform to create a easy to use, flexib...Azure Blob Uploader: The tool aims at developing an efficient way of uploading large size blobs, as blocks of data to the Windows Azure Blob storage. If the upload fai...Bob the Automator: Tool to automate common on the desktop. Using WPF and WF.ClickOnce master: Wizard for easy creation of ClickOnce applications.ConvincingMail Advanced Auto Complete / Auto… -
CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, November 16, 2009
16 Nov 2009 | 12:08 pmCodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, November 16, 2009New ProjectsAndshev.OrmTools: Tools for generating SQL queries using LINQ. ORM framework is also planned to be implemented.ASP.NET Resource Provider for Windows Azure Table Storage: This project is a custom resource provider that enables you to localize an ASP.NET web site using Windows Azure Table storage as the backing store....CreateEntity: This project for my leave school!e:Z!: Enumerations en masse! This project does for enumerations what the Extensia project does for extension methods. So…
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Planet MySQL
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Paul McCullagh answers your questions about PBXT
20 Nov 2009 | 11:29 amFollowing on from our earlier announcement, Paul McCullagh has responded with the answers to your questions – as well as a few I gathered from other Percona folks, and attendees of OpenSQL Camp. Thank you Paul! What’s the “ideal” use case for the PBXT engine, and how does it compare in performance? When would I use PBXT instead of a storage engine like MyISAM, InnoDB or XtraDB? Unfortunately it is not possible to point to a specific category of applications and say, “PBXT will be better here, so try it”. PBXT is a general purpose transactional storage… -
Microsoft's embrace of MySQL could kill it
20 Nov 2009 | 11:01 amMicrosoft is now offering support for MySQL, which should give pause to every open-source company that expects to make money through support subscriptions.PlanetMySQL Voting: Vote UP / Vote DOWN -
Crouching dolphin, hidden bugs.
20 Nov 2009 | 9:54 amI hate it when the changelog of any MySQL release references bugs which when clicked, simply says "You do not have access to bug".PlanetMySQL Voting: Vote UP / Vote DOWN -
Open source and the cloud - the quick and the dead
20 Nov 2009 | 9:49 amSavio Rodrigues has published a post arguing that cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s Azure pose a threat to the monetization of open source by specialist vendors. Savio makes a good case based on the recent launch of AWS’s Relational Database Service, based on MySQL, and Microsoft’s support for MySQL and Tomcat on Azure: “When Amazon decided to offer MySQL via Amazon RDS, they did so without purchasing MySQL support from Sun. I’ve confirmed that Microsoft Azure is supporting MySQL on Azure without paying Sun for a MySQL Enterprise… -
Log Buffer #170: a Carnival of the Vanities for DBAs
20 Nov 2009 | 9:44 amThis is the 170th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs. Welcome. Let’s kick off this week with a double-helping of . . . SQL Server There are lots of good technical posts this week. The SSIS Junkie has some observations and a straw poll on sort transform arbitration. He writes, “This post was prompted by a thread on the MSDN SSIS forum today where the poster was asking how he could replicate the behaviour of SSIS’s Sort transform using T-SQL, specifically he wanted to know how the Sort transform chooses what data to pass through when…
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mySQL DBA
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Asynchronous Queries verses Synchronous Queries
9 Nov 2009 | 4:58 pmIn a procedural language without the use of threads (or Inter Process Communication via forks), to execute I/O requests they are done one after another. Synchronous Queries produce at best a Big-O of N such that N is an element of I/O communication (queries) and N equals the number of queries needed to achieve the requested dataset.With IPC or threads we can speed up common O(N) problems to reduce the N with parallelism, its still functionally a O(N) yet from a single instance point of view N is much less because threads (IPC) takes that Serial computing component and executes the code in… -
Steps I take before upgrading mysql
9 Oct 2009 | 3:34 pmI am not a fan of upgrading mySQL unless I need to. I am of the mind if it is not broke don't fix it, but when I do upgrade I follow these general steps. If I have run into a mySQL bug, I look to see if that bug is fixed by searching the mySQL bug database. If I've notice a performance bottleneck, I look to see if the performance bottleneck has been fixed by searching the same database. I will NOT upgrade to the latest and greatest version of mySQL (5.4) I stay within my branch (5.0). These are my three general motivations that drive my upgrade decisions. Anytime I upgrade I also make a list… -
Nagios Event Handlers - Love them
9 Sep 2009 | 11:30 amWhat is Nagios? Nagios IMHO is the best Open Source monitoring system out there. It supports hosts checks, a level to determine on a host level if a box is considered "up". It supports service check, a level to determine if a particular service such as mySQL is up. It has features to log all events to a flat file or to a DB. It can notify you when a service is in a warning state, error state or unknown state.For the purpose of this article, I am going to talk about handling events such as a clearing up swap.First, let us look at some configuration of Nagios. We are going to define a command,… -
Back From Vacation and Man do I feel great.
21 Aug 2009 | 11:02 amFor the first time ever I took a two-week vacation. How can a person who has 100s of database servers, 100s of web servers, and a system that supports 100K tps across 20 TB of data is able to take a vacation? Easy, I have a great team that is very competent in managing the platform by following our cookbook routines and guidelines for new application interaction with the databases.Where did I go? I went to NYC-stayed in Tribeca and only ate Pizza, Hotdogs, White Castle and Hala Food from vendors that are nearly on every street corner. I also lost 6 pounds! After three months of half-ass… -
mysql UC 2009 Talk
29 Jun 2009 | 1:29 pmScribe is a bit buggy with displaying this presentation:Scaling a Widget Company
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MySQL Performance Blog
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Paul McCullagh answers your questions about PBXT
20 Nov 2009 | 11:29 amFollowing on from our earlier announcement, Paul McCullagh has responded with the answers to your questions – as well as a few I gathered from other Percona folks, and attendees of OpenSQL Camp. Thank you Paul! What’s the “ideal” use case for the PBXT engine, and how does it compare in performance? When would I use PBXT instead of a storage engine like MyISAM, InnoDB or XtraDB? Unfortunately it is not possible to point to a specific category of applications and say, “PBXT will be better here, so try it”. PBXT is a general purpose transactional storage… -
Rare evil MySQL Bug
19 Nov 2009 | 11:21 pmThere is the rare bug which I ran into every so often. Last time I’ve seen it about 3 years ago on MySQL 4.1 and I hoped it is long fixed since… but it looks like it is not. I now get to see MySQL 5.4.2 in the funny state. When you see bug happening you would see MySQL log flooded with error messages like this: 091119 23:03:34 [ERROR] Error in accept: Resource temporarily unavailable 091119 23:03:34 [ERROR] Error in accept: Resource temporarily unavailable 091119 23:03:34 [ERROR] Error in accept: Resource temporarily unavailable 091119 23:03:34 [ERROR] Error in accept: Resource… -
How innodb_open_files affects performance
18 Nov 2009 | 6:58 pmRecently I looked at table_cache sizing which showed larger table cache does not always provides the best performance. So I decided to look at yet another similar variable – innodb_open_files which defines how many files Innodb will keep open while working in innodb_file_per_table mode. Unlike MyISAM Innodb does not have to keep open file descriptor when table is open – open table is purely logical state and appropriate .ibd file may be open or closed. Furthermore besides MySQL table_cache Innodb maintains its own (called data dictionary) which keeps all tables ever accessed since… -
5.0.87-build20 Percona binaries
18 Nov 2009 | 2:04 amDear Community, We are pleased to present the 20th build of MySQL server with Percona patches. Comparing to the previous release it has following new features: The build is based on MySQL-5.0.87 innodb_rw_lock.patch is ported from InnoDB Plugin 1.0.3 To be compatible with RedHat RPM repository, the naming scheme has changed to <rpm name>-<mysql version>-<percona build version>.<buildnumber>.<redhat version>.<architecture>.rpm Example: MySQL-server-percona-5.0.87-b20.29.rhel5.x86_64.rpm See release notes for earlier changes. Since the build 20 MySQL server… -
table_cache negative scalability
16 Nov 2009 | 6:18 pmCouple of months ago there was a post by FreshBooks on getting great performance improvements by lowering table_cache variable. So I decided to investigate what is really happening here. The "common sense" approach to tuning caches is to get them as large as you can if you have enough resources (such as memory). With MySQL common sense however does not always works - we've seen performance issues with large query_cache_size also sort_buffer_size and read_buffer_size may not give you better performance if you increase them. I found this also applies to some other buffers. Even though having…
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Polymath Programmer
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Business environment is different from academia
19 Nov 2009 | 12:03 am[image by xkcd] Raymond Chen also gave a talk on a similar topic at Reflections | Projections 2009, “How Microsoft Is Different from School“. (the video is about 1 hour in length) I wrote something similar before. But I think Randall and Raymond presented their case much better than I did… [I'm still on limited Internet access... just a few days more till my new computer arrives...] ===== Written by Vincent Tan. BY-NC-SA Creative Commons. Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/orcasquall Contact me on Facebook: facebook.com/orcasquall -
Writing is hard
12 Nov 2009 | 12:00 amFound this from Merlin Mann: If you don’t feel that you are possibly on the edge of humiliating yourself, of losing control of the whole thing, then probably what you are doing isn’t very vital. John Irving Darn right. That said, many things get in the way of writing articles, as Brent Diggs found out. I also found that writing articles is harder than writing code. It’s even harder when your wireless adaptor dies on you. Which was exactly what happened to me. Yup, that wireless adaptor. My super power apparently failed this time. There will probably be no new articles for a… -
How to create a stylesheet in Excel Open XML
9 Nov 2009 | 12:00 amToday, I’ll show you how to create a stylesheet in Excel Open XML with the minimum required. The styles I need are: Forced text format for long consecutive string of digits Date format Decimal format We’ll be using the Open XML SDK 2.0 from Microsoft. As of this writing, it’s still in Community Technical Preview state (August 2009), so I’ll just let you search online, in case the final product is released by the time you read this article. The stylesheet is represented by the DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Spreadsheet.Stylesheet class. Through my hours (and hours and… -
Upgraded: Reverse Polish Notation with C#
5 Nov 2009 | 12:00 amI 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?
2 Nov 2009 | 12:00 amI 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,…
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James Gosling: on the Java Road
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Moules Frites @ Devoxx
16 Nov 2009 | 9:34 amI'm back in lovely Antwerp for Devoxx. The purgatory we're in over the situation with Oracle has it's pluses and minuses. On the plus side, I don't have to do a keynote.... Steve Harris from Oracle get's that job. I will be doing a talk, but I'll be concentrating on the store we're in the process of launching. The hard part is that the only questions that anyone will be asking are the ones that neither Steve nor I can answer: until the acquisition clears the EC competition commission and closes, we're required to be mostly silent about the future. We're pretty much limited to the official… -
Java Store β: payment and a new client
3 Nov 2009 | 4:21 pmPut 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
29 Oct 2009 | 9:27 amYet 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!
26 Oct 2009 | 2:14 pmThe 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
20 Oct 2009 | 12:03 pmI 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.
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It's Just a Bunch of Stuff That Happens
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State Capitals 1.1.2
14 Nov 2009 | 11:07 amI just fixed a few bugs in State Capitals: I drew the Hawaii state capital star on the wrong island (epic oops) The “Move Known States to Last” preference was ignored, so you could not disable that behavior I also reworked the graphics for Alaska and Hawaii. These two cards now show the state positions relative to the lower-48 states. Publishing to the Market Once I built the StateCapitals.apk file, I decided to announce my progress on Twitter in real time. Here are my updates: Update 1: OK, I just compiled a new build of State Capitals for #android. It is 12:45 PM and I am… -
Android Storage
9 Nov 2009 | 5:12 pmThe new DROID phone only offers 256 MB for app storage, as Taylor Wimberly points out: The Motorola Droid will be the most powerful Android phone to date when it launches on November 6, 2009. However, the device still features the same shortcomings of all other Android phones. The Droid ships with a 512 MB ROM which contains only 256 MB available for app storage. Fair enough. From this starting point, the article quickly devolves into speculation and FUD: Google does not support installing apps to the SD card (and likely never will), so developers are limited in what they can create. I… -
Cedric on Testing
7 Nov 2009 | 2:03 pmI like how Cedric articulates his approach to testing: Typically, I code a feature, iterate over it a few times and I reach a point when I’m pretty happy with its shape: it’s looking decent, it gets the job done and while there is obviously more work to be done on it, it’s mature enough that writing tests for it at this point will not be a waste. -
Fresh Start
2 Nov 2009 | 10:18 amSony 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
31 Oct 2009 | 9:59 pmI thoroughly enjoyed Smartphone Showdown: iPhone 3GS vs Motorola Droid. It’s a very well-written, objective comparison between two great phones.
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Pushing Pixels
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Sea Glass visuals as a Substance skin
7 Nov 2009 | 7:52 amSome time has passed since Ken Orr has announced that he has teamed up with Kathryn Huxtable to work on a new Sea Glass look-and-feel for Swing applications, and i thought that it would be interesting to put Substance and its Jitterbug editor to the test. Since i don’t have the full artwork for Sea Glass, I based the current implementation on the following mockup: And this is how a Substance sample Sea Glass skin looks like after about half an hour of work: The skin itself is a 122-line color scheme definition (created in Jitterbug) and about a 100 lines of Java code that associates the… -
One tweet at a time: @brownbear @brownbear #whatdoyousee
6 Nov 2009 | 8:52 pmbrownbear 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
5 Nov 2009 | 8:56 amImage 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
4 Nov 2009 | 9:56 pmAfter 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
2 Nov 2009 | 9:04 pmLast 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…
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No Fluff Just Stuff
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Next Stop: NFJS Rocky Mountain Software Symposium
20 Nov 2009 | 11:00 amI speak on Flex and Java Integration, Flex and Hibernate and Collaborative real-time RIA this Sunday (November 22, 2009) at the No Fluff Just Stuff (NFJS) Rocky Mountain Software Symposium in Denver, CO. If you are in Denver and coming to the show, I hope to see you there. Bookmark It Hide Sites -
Management Debt, Technical Debt, and Decision-Making
20 Nov 2009 | 9:00 amDave and Bob have great comments on my post, Might Three Backlogs Be Better Than One?. Dave is describing situations where management is making reasonable decisions, not incurring management debt, and by extension, technical debt. Bob and I have experience with significant management debt. (Take a look at Musings About Management Debt for more information about what I mean by management debt.) Let me provide a little more perspective on these situations. The clients range from large systems of up to a million lines of code (but still software-in-the-small) to software-in-the-large systems of… -
Links for 2009-11-19 [del.icio.us]
20 Nov 2009 | 6:00 amAn Early Look At IE9 for Developers Speed & rendering look to be vastly improved in IE9. Fingers crossed, we'll get some other goodies. -
CouchDB is so Groovy
19 Nov 2009 | 2:00 pmWithout a doubt, the burst of innovation occurring in the open source world over the last few years has led to an increase in developer productivity, baby. Freely available tools, frameworks, and solutions address once-common time sinks. Apache’s CouchDB is no exception. It’s amazingly easy to get going with CouchDB once you have it up and running. And all you need to work with it is an HTTP connection; no JDBC driver is required, nor do you need a third-party administrative-management platform. In this article published by IBM DeveloperWorks entitled “REST up with CouchDB… -
Build4Flash @ StackExchange
19 Nov 2009 | 11:00 amMy friends at Farata (Yakov, Victor and Anatole), who are a very accomplished set of authors, developers, mentors, architects and community leaders in the RIA and Java communities, have set up a venue for you to ask all your questions that pertain to the Flash platform. So go to http://built4flash.stackexchange.com/ and ask away everything about Flex, Flash, AIR, Flex and LAMP, Flex and Java, the Flash development community, open source projects in the space and more. Going by their past and current track record, I am sure you will not be disappointed with their great replies and excellent…
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Planet TW
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Jim Webber: QCon REST Tutorial Slides
20 Nov 2009 | 11:09 amThe slides for the REST tutorial that Ian Robinson and I gave are now online. Enjoy. -
Sumeet Moghe: Making Enterprise 2.0 succeed - little things that can help
20 Nov 2009 | 6:44 amIts amazing how things happen to me at airports. I was flying out of San Francisco this morning and as is usual for me, I was very hungry for a big breakfast. So as soon as I got to the airport, I was hunting for a big meaty adventure. So I located Lori's diner on the north side of the airport and ordered a large breakfast with hashbrowns, eggs, sausages and bacon. You can see that I enjoy my food! When the food arrived though, it was in a paper plate and I had to cut, pierce and tear the crisp bacon with little plastic cutlery. If you haven't done this yet, I suggest you do it simply to know… -
Agile Hong Kong: Anouncing the Agile Hong Kong mailing list
20 Nov 2009 | 1:17 amA mailing list has been created over at Yahoo Groups. You can use this for anything Agile/Extreme Programming/Lean Software Development related. Feel free to post questions, thoughts, comments or whatever may be on your mind. Meeting announcements will continue to be posted in the usual places (this blog and Facebook) but will also extend out to the mailing list. If you have a job opening that you’d like filling or you wish to announce some training etc, then please feel free to make use of the mailing list. The only request is that you keep postings relevant to the group. Enjoy! -
Simon Brunning: Links for 2009-11-19 [del.icio.us]
20 Nov 2009 | 12:00 amAlex Payne — How I Use TextMate Good tips here - ProjectPlus and GetBundles are essentials. Color Syntax copying for TextMate Haskell Wiki The OS Opportunity The Litl is very interesting... How To Be Outraged Scroll Clock Quite, quite mad. Melvyn Bragg history show In Our Time to go online in BBC archive This is fabulous news. I've been listening for about 3 or 4 years, so there will be many years' of programmes to catch up on here. -
David Rupp: RubyConf 2009: Day One
19 Nov 2009 | 9:40 pmIn a word: disappointing.Oh, the venue (the Embassy Suites at the San Francisco Airport) is nice enough. And yes, there are problems finding power and getting on the internet, but that's to be expected. Anyone who attends a gathering of more than about ten people and actually believes the claims of abundant power and speedy WiFi for all is asking for a let-down. So it's not that.Maybe it was just my bad luck in the sessions I chose to attend. I was very much looking forward to hearing some of the Ruby core team speak, so I made sure to catch Matz's keynote, "East meets West", and "Hacking…
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Eric.Weblog()
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My excuses for not blogging about the Microsoft/Teamprise deal
13 Nov 2009 | 10:51 amPeople keep asking me why I haven't blogged about the Microsoft acquisition of our Teamprise division. Well, it's kind of complicated. It all started three days before the signing of the deal when my laptop died. And I mean it's really dead. It won't boot, from any device. Great timing, eh? Fortunately, all I really needed for working on the deal was email and Microsoft Word, so I just switched over to my netbook. I completely forgot about the MacBrick Pro until this weekend when I realized that the press coverage was going to hit Monday morning and the only installation of my… -
Vault 5.0 has shipped
30 Jul 2009 | 8:52 amHooray! Vault 5.0 has shipped! The release notes contain an overview of what's new. -
Vault 5.0 Beta 2
6 Jul 2009 | 11:05 amLast week's beta 2 release means that the long-awaited version 5.0 of SourceGear Vault is coming soon. This includes the regular edition of Vault as well as the "much more better" edition which has integrated bug-tracking. (The latter product is actually called SourceGear Fortress and carries the version number 2.0, but its heart is still Vault.) This release has numerous improvements, but for now I want to highlight one new feature which we call "VSS Handoff". Basically, Handoff is a simpler and faster way of importing a SourceSafe database. Instead of converting all… -
IBM Rational Software Conference
28 May 2009 | 12:12 pmAnybody attending the Rational Software Conference in Orlando next week? I've been making very last-minute plans to be there for some meetings, but I'll have some free time, and it's always cool to connect a face with an email address. So if you're a reader of my blog and will be at the Rational conference next week, drop me an email. And yes, yes I know this blog entry should really have been a tweet. I just haven't gotten into the Twitter thing at all yet, but this very moment is the first time I've thought maybe I should. :-) -
Time and Space Tradeoffs in Version Control Storage
28 Apr 2009 | 7:00 amStorage is one of the most difficult challenges for a version control system. For every file, we must store every version that has ever existed. The logical size of a version control repository never shrinks. It just keeps growing and growing, and every old version needs to remain available. So, what is the best way to store every version of everything? As we look for the right scheme, let's remember three things we consider to be important: Data integrity is paramount. In a version control tool, nothing can be considered to be more important than guarding the safety…
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Android Developers Blog
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Integrating Application with Intents
11 Nov 2009 | 11:00 amWritten in collaboration with Michael Burton, Mob.ly; Ivan Mitrovic, uLocate; and Josh Garnier, OpenTable.OpenTable, uLocate, and Mob.ly worked together to create a great user experience on Android. We saw an opportunity to enable WHERE and GoodFood users to make reservations on OpenTable easily and seamlessly. This is a situation where everyone wins — OpenTable gets more traffic, WHERE and GoodFood gain functionality to make their applications stickier, and users benefit because they can make reservations with only a few taps of a finger. We were able to achieve this deep integration… -
ADC 2 Round 2 Voting Open
5 Nov 2009 | 9:15 pmThe 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
2 Nov 2009 | 2:00 pmWith 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!
27 Oct 2009 | 9:00 amI 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
23 Oct 2009 | 2:00 pmAndroid 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.
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OpenSocial API Blog
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Announcing the Worldwide Ning Appathon Competition
6 Nov 2009 | 8:28 amLet 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!
21 Oct 2009 | 3:40 pmTo 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!
23 Sep 2009 | 3:55 pmMark 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
22 Sep 2009 | 9:45 amMySpace 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!
17 Sep 2009 | 4:39 pmHello! 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…
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Amazon Web Services Blog
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AWS News Summary...
12 Nov 2009 | 5:57 amHere's a summary of the AWS announcements that we made last night: Important updates to our Security Center including a revised AWS Security White Paper and the results of our SAS 70 type II audit. A plan to bring AWS to datacenters in Asia. Selection of the finalists in the 2009 Start-Up Challenge. Congratulations to Bizo, FlightCaster, Gazaro, GoodData, Involver, Motally, and ReTel Technologies. The final event will take place on December 9th in Sunnyvale, California. Register if you'd like to attend. The AWS SDK for .NET Developers. Brand new Developer Centers for .NET, PHP,… -
New AWS SDK for .NET Developers
11 Nov 2009 | 8:43 pmThe new AWS SDK for .NET Developers will provide you with the libraries, code samples, and documentation needed to build an AWS-powered application using any programming language capable of making .NET calls including C#, Visual Basic, Windows PowerShell, and so forth. The SDK includes the following goodies: A new AWS .NET Library - This library provides a set of developer-friendly APIs that hide much of the low-level plumbing associated with programming for the AWS cloud, including authentication, retries, and error handing. The library supports the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, Auto… -
New Amazon CloudFront Feature: Private Content
11 Nov 2009 | 7:25 pmYou can now use Amazon CloudFront to distribute private content such as digital downloads, training materials, personalized documents, or media files. You can use this new feature to implement the following types of access models: Access only allowed after a specified date/time. Access only allowed between a pair of dates/times. Access only allowed before a specified date/time. You can then enable access from a designated IP address or IP address range by using the CIDR notation. You can allow a single IP address (one user or client system) or a range of addresses (perhaps a school or a… -
Cloud Computing and Mobile Devices at the BlackBerry Developer Conference
9 Nov 2009 | 7:38 pmAWS user Bob Wise (VP of Engineering for Melodeo, producer of nuTsie) asked me to pass along some information about his upcoming session at the BlackBerry Developer Conference (November 9-12 in San Francisco). Here's the scoop: Developers who want to build scalable, cost-effective cloud-based solutions will be interested in this session. Learn about Melodeo's client/server technical architecture which runs entirely on Amazon's AWS cloud computing platform. Since Melodeo's service with nuTsie streams media and is a large-scale service, we’ll also cover scaling and… -
The AWS Blog: The First Five Years
9 Nov 2009 | 10:46 amI was checking out the archive for this blog and realized that I wrote my first post exactly five years ago! In that time I've written posts to introduce each of our new services. Here's a quick recap of the highlights: We started out with the November 2004 introduction of the Amazon Simple Queue Service - When we rolled this out five years ago, I think the general reaction was "Huh? Why would Amazon do that?" I think it is now pretty obvious that a scalable messaging model is an essential component of a scalable system architecture. The next step was Amazon S3 in the…
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puredanger.com Blog
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Terracotta Acquires Quartz
18 Nov 2009 | 10:55 pmToday Terracotta announced that it had acquired the Quartz job scheduling framework. Quartz is truly a ubiquitous Java open source framework, embedded in major containers and products like Spring, Confluence, Appfuse, Sakai, Liferay, etc. As part of the Quartz migration we have: Same Apache 2 license James House continues as the primary developer on Quartz but now with the support of the Terracotta team New Quartz web site home New source repository New Fisheye support for the source repo New JIRA project New forum Same mailing lists for now We are building a clustered Quartz implementation… -
Closures after all?
18 Nov 2009 | 6:33 amApparently Mark Reinhold announced that closures would be added to JDK 7 at Devoxx today: I can’t say what to make of that really. For years Sun has been saying that there is no consensus on closures and delayed the formation of a JSR or expert group on the subject despite having three proposals, all with prototypes. Neal Gafter’s BGGA closures proposal is easily the most fully baked and has a fairly complete prototype and all of the necessary specification changes. I would have to guess that Mark’s announcement must be based primarily off the ideas in Neal’s work, but… -
Terracotta Use Cases
16 Nov 2009 | 8:46 amYesterday, I posted a note about what Terracotta has been up to in the last 6 months. Casper Bang commented: Unlike Ehcache and Hibernate, Terracotta as a magic problem solving layer is somewhat harder to grasp. After having read a bunch of your posts, I am still not 100% sure what Terracotta is or how much is to gain from it. On top of that, an Oracle DBA will claim that Oracle already does the best job at caching. Have you guys thought of putting together some (simple but concrete) cases for would-be customers to study? I started answering this in a comment, but I had too much to say. -
Terracotta, Ehcache, Hibernate, and more to come
15 Nov 2009 | 2:25 pmBased on a couple of chance occurrences that have happened in the last week, I’ve come to realize that many people are not aware of the awesome stuff Terracotta has been putting out at a frantic pace in the last six months. (At least, it sure feels frantic to me.) Going back a bit to the July/August timeframe, we released Terracotta for Hibernate, a clustered Hibernate product that provides a second level cache provider and a monitoring panel inside the Terracotta Developer Console. We spent all summer with the whole team doing almost nothing but tuning that sucker and we made the cache… -
JSR 166 Concurrency Updates Hit JDK 7
15 Nov 2009 | 1:46 pmDoug Lea posted a note today on the concurrency-interest list that the bulk of the JDK 7 changes from JSR 166y (the second maintenance update) have been pushed in the latest JDK 7 M5 snapshots. You can find the API for these changes here. The major updates are: Phasers A Phaser is kind of like a CyclicBarrier but are more flexible. A CyclicBarrier allows threads to repeatedly meet at a synchronization point and is something I use all the time to control multi-threaded tests or applications. Phaser expands on CyclicBarrier by allowing several additional features: Allows party count to change…
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Udi Dahan - The Software Simplist
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Search and Messaging
1 Nov 2009 | 9:33 pmOne 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
9 Oct 2009 | 2:24 pmI 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
29 Sep 2009 | 4:05 amMy 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
6 Sep 2009 | 11:06 pmSo, 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
1 Sep 2009 | 5:04 am
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Agile Software Development
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What's the ideal Sprint length
19 Nov 2009 | 10:00 pmIntroduction I may have blogged about this previously. I have written so many blogs, I can't recall any more. However questions regarding Sprint length surface on the forums regularly. As per usual, the answers one must give always depends on the context and every context is different than the next. So let me start with the context - this is an excerpt of a post on the scrum development group on Yahoo. Incidentally, Yahoo groups is a good place to hang out. You learn a lot from all the questions and the different contexts facing teams around the world. The Context A team of 5 members… -
Agile Project Management Questions Answered
16 Nov 2009 | 12:27 pmI was asked recently to answer 5 questions about agile project management for a feature on PM Boulevard. I thought you might appreciate seeing them here too... 1. How has the Agile practice evolved over the last two years? I don’t personally think that agile practices have particularly changed in the last two years, however there is clearly a stronger emphasis on some elements more than others now.Scrum certainly seems to have crossed into the mainstream since I started my blog. Even though it was less than 3 years ago, Scrum still felt quite new and innovative in the UK at that time. I… -
Product Owner vs Product Manager
5 Nov 2009 | 10:00 pmIntroduction 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
23 Oct 2009 | 11:08 pmIntroduction 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
8 Oct 2009 | 11:00 pmIntroduction 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…
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Agile Software Development Made Easy!
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Agile Software Development Teams Need Managers Too!
18 Nov 2009 | 8:00 amMike Cottmeyer recently wrote an interesting article about whether or not managers can lead agile teams? Organisations do need managers, for a wide variety of reasons. And let's face it, the roles of Product Owner and Scrum Master are management roles.They may not be management roles in the traditional sense, but management roles they are.The Product Owner is there to manage stakeholders, manage incoming requests and prioritise work for the team. This is management.The Scrum Master is there to deal with any issues that are impeding the team's progress, facilitate communication, orchestrate… -
Agile Software Development Made Easy! Shortlisted in Computer Weekly Blog Awards
16 Nov 2009 | 4:39 amI'm delighted that Agile Software Development Made Easy! has been shortlisted again in this year's Computer Weekly blog awards.Computer Weekly is one of the original trade magazines for IT professionals, so it's quite an honour to be highlighted by such an important brand.There are some other really good blogs in the shortlist too! Click here to see the shortlisted blogs in the Project Management category.The results will be announced on 25th November, so if you like my blog, vote now!Kelly.Photo by eecue -
Agile Project Management: Avoiding The Waterfall
15 Nov 2009 | 12:06 pmThis is a guest blog post by Richard Revis from The Plan Is"Agile project management can be hard to implement successfully because even once you have good practices in place the way projects are run can revert to the old methodology quickly. I would like to share three reasons that I have come across for the reappearance of waterfall project management in an organisation and look at some ways to address this.The first reason is the sponsor's view of how a project should operate. A client, internal or external, probably has a mental model in his head of how things will happen when… -
eBook - Agile Software Development Made Easy!
30 Oct 2009 | 6:00 amMany 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 amHere 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…
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Chris Spagnuolo's EdgeHopper
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Help me name my new blog
10 Nov 2009 | 5:19 pmHi. Yes, it’s been a while since I’ve written…ANYTHING. Well, the time has come to start writing again. But I’m not sure how much I’ll be writing here on Edgehopper for now (however, I might surprise myself and everyone else if I did start writing here again). To catch you all up, I lost my job a few months ago and had an epiphany of sorts, mostly about what’s important in life and what makes me happy. I’ve taken the time-off as kind of a blessing in disguise. It allowed me to spend time with my family, watch my little ones smile, and enjoy… -
Facebook Lite Goes Live
10 Sep 2009 | 3:43 pmAfter much rumor and speculation following Facebook’s acquisition of FriendFeed, Facebook officially launched “Facebook Lite” today. There had been rumors circulating for the past few weeks that Facebook was testing a lite interface and now you can get yours today. It’s essentially a stripped down version of Facebook, and quite frankly, I like it. It’s simpler, easier to use, and not as cluttered as the original Facebook was becoming. Check out the light box below featuring screenshots from the new Facebook Lite (click on a thumbnail to open the light box and… -
The US Open: How to “Grand Slam” an iPhone App
9 Sep 2009 | 9:20 amA few years ago I was in Melbourne, Australia at the time the Australian Open was being played at Rod Laver Arena. I wasn’t a big fan of fuzzy yellow balls and rackets, but quickly became one after attending a match in the fabled arena. A few years later and I’m finding myself following tennis as much as I can. And now, the US Open has made it easier to follow the tournament with possibly one of the best sporting event iPhone apps yet. The 2009 US Open iPhone app has just about everything you need to follow the tournament except for live video coverage. Other than that, you get… -
Crowdsourcing Journalism: Help A Reporter Out
2 Sep 2009 | 10:02 amLet me just say that I love crowdsourcing and crowdsourced projects. With all the things that are being crowdsourced today, one of the most interesting is the trend toward crowdsourcing journalism. On the forefront of this effort is HARO….or Help A Reporter Out. HARO is the brainchild of Peter Shankman, an entrepreneur and the CEO of The Geek Factory, a PR and Marketing boutique firm in New York City. Essentially HARO connects journalists who have questions or queries for their stories with YOU. It’s such a simple but amazing way to connect journalists with the widest possible… -
Just Launched: Five Hens Mommy Blog
1 Sep 2009 | 2:24 pmWell, in the last few weeks of being technically “unemployed” I’ve been helping some very cool Northern Colorado moms start their very own mommy blog called Five Hens. It’ written by five moms who have a wide range of kids from 3 to 15 and who have widely varied backgrounds. They’re all awesome writers and I have a sneaking suspicion that this is going to be one great blog to follow. Speaking of following, you can follow the Five Hens on Twitter too. The are fivehens on Twitter. So, take a look, leave a comment or say hello to the Five Hens, and let me know what…
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Agile Commons
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What’s Driving YOU to Better Testing? Consider the Story of Amy and Morgan
19 Nov 2009 | 3:25 amDon't let this be your user! Recently, my Rally colleagues Ben Carey and Ryan Martens delivered a great webinar about testing and quality. What particularly struck me about the session was how Ben set up why we should, at a very personal level, care about testing and quality. Enter Amy and her daughter Morgan. As Ben told the story, Amy was a back office admin in a physician’s office. It was her responsibility to get billing out to insurance companies for the practice, and on one particular day, things were not going well. She kept getting cryptic error messages. The batch just… -
My Experience with PDCA – Beyond Basic Inspect and Adapt
11 Nov 2009 | 9:56 amAt Rally, we are always working on both maturing and growing our use of Agile. We started with a single development team and over the past 6 years have been through the process of splitting, growing, partnering, and acquiring. We did this while continuing to inspect and adapt our development and our strategy execution processes. We have teams in various stages of maturity using Scrum and Kanban to run all parts of our company. As the CTO, I have my focus on our strategic planning and execution process. In 2008, I started to focus on maturing our annual and quarterly planning. To do… -
How do you Celebrate?
30 Oct 2009 | 2:42 pmI 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
29 Oct 2009 | 4:28 amI 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
26 Oct 2009 | 3:29 pmJust 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 –…
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Successful Software
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Presents for programmers
19 Nov 2009 | 12:22 pmIt is coming up to that time of year again. You had better start dropping some hints on what you want for Christmas if you don’t want socks again. How about a software themed T-shirt? You can never have too many T-shirts and it means you can go an extra day before you have to do the laundry. It just so happens that www.programmer-tshirts.com (set up by myself and Patrick McKenzie last year) carries a range of wittily(?) captioned T-shirts for software types of all stripes including: microISVS, C++ programmers, LISP programmers, Mac developers, software engineers, managers and bloggers. -
microISV reading list
12 Nov 2009 | 2:30 amI have added a microISV reading list page to this blog. Please feel free to add your own comments to the page on the books listed or any other books you feel are relevant. Posted in marketing, microISV, reviews, software, usability Tagged: amazon, books, business, development, marketing, microISV, reading list, software, usability -
Off to ESWC 2009
4 Nov 2009 | 6:27 amI 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. Posted in conference, marketing, microISV, software Tagged: 2009, berlin, conference, eswc, european, marketing, software, talk -
How good are your backups?
28 Oct 2009 | 3:07 pmWe 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
24 Oct 2009 | 4:08 pmApple 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
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Encosia
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Using jQuery validation with ASP.NET WebForms
4 Nov 2009 | 1:57 amYou’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?
11 Oct 2009 | 8:26 pmBy 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
20 Sep 2009 | 10:44 pmIt 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?
14 Sep 2009 | 8:27 amWhile 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
25 Aug 2009 | 9:33 amThough 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.
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The Endeavour
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Tragedy of the anti-commons
20 Nov 2009 | 5:48 amThe tragedy of the commons is the name economists use to describe the abuse of common property. For example, overfishing in international waters. Someone who owns a lake will not over fish his own lake because he knows he will benefit in the future from restraining his fishing now. But in international waters, no individual has an incentive to restrain fishing. Mankind as a whole certainly benefits from restraint, but single fishermen do not. Michael Heller discusses an opposite effect, the tragedy of the anti-commons, on the EconTalk podcast. The tragedy of the commons describes the over-use… -
Random inequalities IX: new tech report
20 Nov 2009 | 5:46 amJust posted: Exact calculation of inequality probabilities. This report summarizes previous results for calculating P(X > Y) where X and Y are random variables. Previous posts on random inequalities: Introduction Analytical results Numerical results Cauchy distributions Beta distributions Gamma distributions Three or more random variables Folded normals -
Three quotes on software development
19 Nov 2009 | 4:03 amHere are three quotes on software development I ran across yesterday. From Douglas Crockford, author of JavaScript, The Good Parts: Just because something is a standard it doesn’t mean it’s the right choice for every application (e.g. XML). From Yukihiro Matsumoto, creator of Ruby: An open source project is like a shark. It must keep moving, or it will die. From Roger Sessions, CTO of ObjectWatch: A good IT architecture is made up largely of agreements to disagree. … Bad architectures and good both contain disagreements, but the bad architectures lack agreements on how to do… -
Office 2007 documents are zipped XML
18 Nov 2009 | 7:47 pmMicrosoft Office 2007 documents are zipped XML files. For example, you can change a Word document’s extension from .docx to .zip and unzip it. Apparently this isn’t widely known; most people I talk to are surprised when I mention this. I’ve found a couple uses for the zip/XML format. One is that you can unzip a document and grab all the embedded content. For example, .jpeg images are simply files that are zipped up into the Office document. Another use is that you can crack open a document’s underlying XML to search for something you can’t find via the user… -
Subnatural and supernatural
17 Nov 2009 | 5:06 pmI recently ran across a discussion of quantum mechanics from C. S. Lewis. The older scientists believed that the smallest particles of matter moved according to strict laws: in other words, that the movements of each particle were “interlocked” with the total system of Nature. Some modern scientists seem to think — if I understand them — that this is not so. They seem to think that the individual unit of matter … moves in an indeterminate or random fashion; moves, in fact, “on its own” or “of its own accord.” He goes on to explain that the…
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Programmable Web
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Fill In The Blank With Wikipedia Quiz
20 Nov 2009 | 8:49 amThere’s no doubt that Wikipedia is a giant store of information. And yes, they have an API, but the data isn’t exactly structured. But that didn’t stop Jim Blackler, who created Quizipedia, a fun game based off of Wikipedia entries. The concept is fairly simple: guess which of ten words fits into a blank space in a sentence. As you guess correctly, your choices narrow, but you only have one minute to get them all. The quiz runs on Google App Engine (our Google App Engine API profile) and was created with the Google Web Toolkit. The part we see is fairly simple. It just needs… -
Science Museum Opens API and Challenges Developers to Mashup the Cosmos
19 Nov 2009 | 8:56 amLondon’s Science Museum, founded in 1851, houses a number of historical innovations, including the oldest surviving steam locomotive, and a replica of Babbage’s Difference Engine. Now, with the rollout of a new API to provide access to information about some of its exhibits, the museum itself has become an example of technological innovation. The Science Museum is currently running an exhibit called “Cosmos & Culture: how astronomy has shaped our world“. In order to help promote the exhibit, the museum has created an online mashup contest. Developers are invited to… -
New Open Web Foundation Licensing Used by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Facebook to Open Source Standards
19 Nov 2009 | 12:01 amFacebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and several other companies (including several startups) have released various specifications and standards as part of the release of a new licensing agreement by the Open Web Foundation (OWF). The newOpen Web Foundation Agreement (OWFa) is a licensing agreement aimed at streamlining innovation by making it easy for a variety of entities to open source standards and specifications in a straightforward and easy manner. If you’re not familiar with the OWF, it is a non-profit organization that helps developer communities collaborate and share technical… -
New Billing API Helps Chargify Your Website
17 Nov 2009 | 8:30 pmMore than ever, websites are seeking out revenue opportunities. And for services that provide value, customers are willing to pay. However, if creating an e-commerce system is too much distraction for your development team, try to get yourself in on the Chargify beta. The Chargify API is the core of their service, which handles billing and subscription services (details at our Chargify API profile). Lead developer Michael Klett explained how it works in an interview with ZDNet: Customers start out on a merchant’s website that’s integrated with Chargify. They’ll enter their… -
NextStop’s Next Step? A Travel Guide API
17 Nov 2009 | 5:00 amNextStop helps you discover things to do and places to go. And now you can include NextStop content in your website using the NextStop API to provide the same recommendations to your users. Your application can search NextStop using location coordinates, an address, or just a city name. Results can also be filtered by keyword or any combination of four categories. You can get an idea of the search options by using the recommendations on a map example application. The data provided by NextStop is extensive, with everything you’d need to recreate the site. The site launched earlier this…
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The Programmer's Paradox
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Prime Perspectives
15 Nov 2009 | 3:29 pmIt all started with a dream about infinity. Well, not just one infinity, but an infinite number of them, spanning out in all directions. A repeating pattern of infinities splitting off from other infinities. It's a simple pattern, but also a very complex one. It was intriguing enough to compel me to spend some time exploring my thoughts a little deeper. I was captivated by the overall pattern. -
Programming Structure
6 Nov 2009 | 1:24 pmI'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
17 Oct 2009 | 10:36 amOK, 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
14 Oct 2009 | 8:13 pmI'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
30 Sep 2009 | 7:09 pmI'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,
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CodeHill
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WordPress Permalinks in Windows Using IIRF
19 Nov 2009 | 6:00 amIonic’s ISAPI Rewrite Filter is an URL rewriting ISAPI filter for IIS 5.0, 5.1, 6.0 and 7.0. It could be found at http://www.codeplex.com/IIRF. It has a detailed online help file, a long list of examples, and a discussion board that has more than 650 discussions. With the help of this filter we have been able [...] No related posts. -
Understanding the Software Development Process
16 Nov 2009 | 6:00 amThe software development process has undergone drastic changes over the years. Initially only requiring a developer to write the code of the software, advances in the industry have expanded development into a more complex process. Involving architects, analysts, programmers, testers and users to develop codes, it is now capable of delivering more advanced results. You [...] Related posts:Understanding SEO Terminology for Better Website MarketingHow to Choose Website Designers -
Technology Blogs to Visit Daily
12 Nov 2009 | 6:00 amHere is a list of technology blogs that are updated daily or multiple times a day. Boing Boing Started as a zine in 1988 by Mark Frauenfelder and Carla Sinclair, became a website in 1995 and later relaunched as a blog in 2000. The gadgets blog was added in August 2007 and was headed by former Gizmodo [...] Related posts:6 C# Blogs Worth FollowingHow to Check Your Site for Infected Links and Malware -
How to Choose Website Designers
9 Nov 2009 | 6:00 amNowadays, most people have a computer and Internet access and having a website either for businesses or for fun is a common reality. Businessmen have realized that it isn’t worth it to lose customers to the competition who sells worldwide via their website and they have decided to invest in web development and to start [...] Related posts:Understanding the Software Development ProcessUnderstanding SEO Terminology for Better Website MarketingAn Open Source Website Screen Capture Program -
Installing ionCube Loader in Windows Server
5 Nov 2009 | 6:00 amionCube 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#
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Embedded Computing Design
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D&R announces a Configurable Documentation Platform as part of its Enterprise Intranet Platform at IP/ESC'09
20 Nov 2009 | 8:48 amNovember 20, 2009 -- D&R is announcing a new application embedded in its renowned Configurable Enterprise platform. Initially targeting IP cataloguing and IP Reuse, D&R added at DAC 09 External supplier license management features presently deployed in major Telecom companies. At IP / ESC 09, D&R announces a new application facing one of the most critical companies’ challenges: How to create and maintain in a large company web accessible, comprehensive documentation for product supporting a large number of options or configurations How to update easily and follow up product versions… -
Chassis Plans CCI-17 & CCI-19 Rugged Industrial Grade 1U LCD Keyboard Drawers
20 Nov 2009 | 7:01 amSan Diego, Calif – November 20, 2009 - Chassis Plans, The Original Industrial Computer Source®, a leader in providing rugged rackmount systems to the military and other challenging markets, today introduced the CCI-17 and CCI-19 Rugged Industrial Grade 1U Rackmount LCD Keyboard drawers. These products are designed and manufactured in the USA. The displays are 17- or 19-inch TFT LCDs providing 1280x1024 resolution. An anti-glare hard coat is provided over the LCD for protection and better display clarity. Three industrial grade Genesis LCD controllers are available providing a mix… -
STMicroelectronics Leads Drive to Better LED Signage for High-Resolution Viewing
20 Nov 2009 | 12:05 amGeneva, November 12,2009 - STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM), a leading developer of semiconductors for LED lighting, has announced a new series of highly accurate LED drivers with automatic power saving, enabling electronic signage such as road signs, advertising, stadium displays, battery or solar-powered signs and similar equipment to deliver better, high-resolution viewing by ensuring consistent brightness across the viewing area. The brightness of an LED is closely related to the drive current, usually supplied by a separate driver chip. As each new generation of LEDs produces greater… -
Extreme Engineering Solutions Introduces XPedite5501: First Conduction-Cooled PrPMC / XMC Module Targeting Freescale Dual-Core QorIQ(tm) P2020 Processor
19 Nov 2009 | 9:49 pmMiddleton, WI – November 20, 2009 – Extreme Engineering Solutions (X-ES) announces the availability of XPedite5501, the first conduction-cooled PMC/XMC single-board computer based on Freescale Semiconductor’s dual-core QorIQ™ P2020 processor. XPedite5501 provides a high-performance, feature-rich solution for current and future generations of embedded applications.XPedite5501 operates with two 1.2 GHz PowerPC e500 cores, and supports:• Up to 4 GB DDR3-800 ECC SDRAM• Up to 8 GB of NAND flash and 256 MB of redundant NOR flash• 32-bit/33-MHz PCI (PMC… -
Befact Technologies Unveils New PoE PD Module Cost Competitive Thin Type Isolated Embedded PoE SPD Modules
19 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pmFor consumer electronics market, Befact Technologies furthermore launches cost competitive and high quality embedded SPD Modules in November, 2009. SPD series modules support two output voltages － 5.1V (SPD-50) and 12V (SPD-12). SPD-12 can deliver up to 12W output power, maximum DC/DC converting efficiency is 89％ @ full load. SPD-50 can deliver up to 12W output power, maximum DC/DC converting efficiency is 85％ @ full load. The operation temperature is from -15℃ to 55℃. SPD modules are compliant with IEEE 802.3af power classification, its isolated and thin type…
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Black Ninja Software
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Last Class Before Christmas! SQL Server 2005 Transact-SQL Programming
12 Nov 2009 | 11:08 amTraining is just one of the many things we do here at Black Ninja. We really do enjoy taking the time out to prepare for and deliver a successful training course. Because of the feedback and interest level, we’re offering one more class before the Christmas break: SQL Server 2005 Transact-SQL Programming. Who Is This Class For? This is a fairly introductory course, so anyone who has some relational database background who wants to learn to script and create programmable objects in sql server using transact-sql would be an ideal candidate. Familiarity with programming/scripting languages… -
We Will be Heading Down To A Few Conferences This Year
18 Oct 2009 | 7:15 pmA 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?
9 Oct 2009 | 10:48 amCertifications 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
25 Sep 2009 | 12:43 pmAnyone 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
4 Jun 2009 | 9:41 pmYes 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"…
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Ruminations of a Programmer
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DSLs In Action - Updates on the Book Progress
2 Nov 2009 | 10:50 pmDSLs 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
1 Nov 2009 | 9:35 pmToday 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 ?
17 Oct 2009 | 11:48 amStephan 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…
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9lessons
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Press Enter to Search - Google Future Advertising Plan.
18 Nov 2009 | 5:11 amHave you seen Google is experimenting out a search page (google.co.uk) with visually nothing else instead of search button text saying “press enter to search”. My view Google will use blank place on home page. Last week I read an article on Mashable ( An Ad on Google’s Homepage ). Google.co.uk - This space intentionally left blank. Take a look at this image http://tinyurl.com/yapujym -
Jquery Basics Series - 2
18 Nov 2009 | 4:15 amVery 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 - 3
16 Nov 2009 | 5:20 amPrevious series I had discussed about jQuery effects. Now time to talk about custom animation with jQuery using animate(). This is very interesting using this we can make beautiful web projects. Jquery Basics Series - 1 Jquery Basics Series - 2 Custom Animation with animate() $(selector).animate() While clicking the anchor link class='animate' it's calling the class arrow adding animation -
Elliott Kember - Awesome Developer
14 Nov 2009 | 3:21 amElliott Kember really loves pink, He is a freelance web developer and desinger. You should follow Elliottkember.com because he is an inspiring designer and developer. His twitter profile @elliottkember The Snake Arena! Really beautifully jQuery plugin. Now Spreadtweet - A twitter client application. Tweet with Excel. CHATR BOX Realtime chat for the Twitter generation The Sexy Curls -
Facebook Style Wall Post Application with jQuery and Ajax.
10 Nov 2009 | 8:45 amAre you looking for Facebook style wall post application. It contains update, comment and delete with jquery animation effect. In this post I had combined some of my old tutorials demos in single page. Take a look at this live demo. You really like it. Live Demo Download Script Only for Email Subscribers. Update and Delete Records with Animation Slide Effect using Jquery and Ajax.
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Learn jQuery Now
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A Brand New Look, Some Changes, and An Announcement
26 Oct 2009 | 11:14 amI 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
14 Oct 2009 | 11:00 pmFirst 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
8 Oct 2009 | 2:03 pmProbably 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
7 Oct 2009 | 2:02 pmWith 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
6 Oct 2009 | 5:57 pmLearn 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! ]]
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Jolicloud Blog
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New apps this week: Qonversation, Monitter, DimDim, Mingoville, Shared Robotics, SnagFilms, and more.
13 Nov 2009 | 10:37 amThe online apps that made it on our directory this week: Qonversation Qonversation is a micro-forum service with a functionality similar to Twitter, but different in that you follow ‘Qonversations’ instead of individuals. You need to create an account to then register a few keywords reflecting your interests. The slick, minimal interface quickly lets you connect to ongoing qonversations, or start a new one on the topic of your choice. Invites can be found here. Monitter This Twitter client lets you “monitter” the Twitter world for a set of keywords and watch what… -
Jolicloud Netbook Compatibility List Updated
12 Nov 2009 | 9:35 amOur list of compatible devices is growing. A big thank you to our users who have contributed by adding new netbook models on our dedicated Wiki page. Please check the list below for the latest additions to our official list of compatible devices. If your netbook appears on our official list it means that we have extensively tested it and that Jolicloud supports your machine. See the complete list of supported netbooks here. If your netbook does not show up on the list, don’t worry, it’s probably just because we haven’t had a chance to properly test it yet. We are trying our best to get… -
Apps of the week: SwingVine, ListAtlas, Shorts Bay, MyOats, Trivial Pursuit Experiment and more.
6 Nov 2009 | 10:04 amSome 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.
2 Nov 2009 | 3:06 pmThere 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.
23 Oct 2009 | 11:36 amThis 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…
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GOYELLOblog
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10 Best Features of Silverlight 4
19 Nov 2009 | 12:52 pmria .net Silverlight 4 is striking the market with new release! This time it will change the market for ever! -
Seesmic Twitter Client Available for Windows
18 Nov 2009 | 11:47 amSeesmic desktop based on Adobe Air used to be one of my favorite Twitter clients up to the moment that FleetDeck desktop arrived. Seesmic had too many performance issues, Tweets were missing. Today I received the announcement of the Preview Version of Seesmic for Windows which made me very curious again. The first impression [...] -
The Nonsense of SEO and PageRank Improvements
17 Nov 2009 | 3:20 pmWe get many requests to increase website PageRanks and to make websites search engine friendly. In many cases I really don’t understand what people are bothering about. Why would a rather locally oriented company be willing to spend a fortune for a high PageRank on keywords that nobody is going to use? To be [...] -
ASP MVC ToolBox – MvcContrib Library
17 Nov 2009 | 2:30 amMvcContrib is very young but already pretty nice set of libraries that can speed up your development process and improve quality of your code today. -
Why Do We Need Open Source Frameworks?
17 Nov 2009 | 1:41 amThe purpose of using widely available frameworks is surprisingly not always clear to everyone. Some even prefer not to use any framework at all. Obviously for some it may be harder to understand than for others. The question remains: why using Open Source frameworks is so important and valuable? Be DRY Be [...]
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Andrea Olivato's Blog
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Ultimate collection of Google Chrome search shortcuts
17 Nov 2009 | 4:03 amThis is an in-development post. I will update it regularly to add new services. If you want to contribute, please jump to comments and leave your link + shortcut. I preferred a very short keyword to maximize the usefulness of these shortcuts. You can obviously decide to use a more descriptive keyword using more letters. How to [...] -
Clean Wordpress Database removing empty categories
4 Nov 2009 | 1:50 amIf 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
3 Nov 2009 | 11:27 amJust 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
2 Nov 2009 | 1:45 pmThe 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
23 Oct 2009 | 5:39 amI 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 [...]
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Raakesh.com
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How to Add Podcasts to Google Listen?
10 Nov 2009 | 11:24 pmI already wrote an article about Google Listen for Android Community. Now I want to tell you how to make an RSS (XML) file for your podcasts so that you could submit that to Apple iTunes for iPhone and iPod users, as well as use the same RSS file to subscribe to your podcasts using Google Listen. Google Listen does not have a way for us (podcast makers) to submit our podcasts to Google's podcast directory, but we can add it to our phones (Android Phones) and subscribe.read more -
How to Cut down your cell phone bill by using Google Voice?
2 Nov 2009 | 9:14 amGoogle 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
1 Nov 2009 | 11:22 pmIf 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
1 Nov 2009 | 8:47 pmGoogle 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
29 Oct 2009 | 11:57 pmSince 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
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Learnivore!
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Getting Started with Iptables (Fosscasts - free)
19 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pmIptables is the de-facto firewall solution for Linux. In this episode, we'll setup basic rules to only allow certain traffic and even deny certain IP addresses from connecting. NOTE: I did catch one minor error in the screencast after encoding - I mention iptables in conjunction with both Linux and Unix. Iptables has many hooks into the Linux kernel and therefor is not available for Unix. Sorry for any confusion. -
Episode 0.19 - racksh (Rubypulse - free)
17 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pm"racksh (Rack::Shell) is a console for Rack based ruby web applications.. " - Marcin Kulik -
Declarative Authorization (Railscasts - free)
15 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pmDeclarative authorization provides an advanced and powerful solution for role based authorization. -
Creating your own RubyGems (Remi - free)
15 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pmNow that GemCutter is becoming the standard host for gems, deploying gems couldn’t be easier! We no longer need tools like hoe, newgem, bones, jeweler or others. Sure, these tools may still be useful, but we don’t need them to create simple gems! Let’s say... -
Integrating Twitter into Rails (Remi - free)
14 Nov 2009 | 4:00 pmSo, back when all I needed to do with many Twitter apps was to authenticate against Twitter’s OAuth and that was it, I created and screencasted the original Rack::OAuth gem. After coding a few Twitter apps that needed more integration, and in response to feedback...
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SHAZAML!
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Hidden Object: Episode 13 – Give me a Hint
17 Nov 2009 | 11:12 amThis is episode 13 of Creating a Hidden Object Game is Silverlight 3. In this episode, we will add a hint feature to the game to help the players when they can’t find an item. This will require various animations and a custom behavior. The hint feature can be segmented into three parts: Recharging hint button Hint overlay image with animation HintBehavior to randomly position the hint overlay image Hint Button To make the hint button, we will use an image of a laptop, a TextBlock (hintTextBlock), and a ProgressBar (progressBar) wrapped in a Canvas (hintCanvas): The idea is that the… -
Video: Creating a Silverlight 3 Casual Game using Blend 3 and Triggers, Actions, and Behaviors
9 Nov 2009 | 7:19 amOn Saturday, November 7, 2009 at 9:00am I presented at the Desert Code Camp in Phoenix, AZ. The topic of my presentation was Silverlight casual game development. In less than an hour I demonstrated how to use triggers, actions, and behaviors in Blend 3 to create a hidden object game. Because all code was contained in the TABs (Triggers, Actions, and Behaviors) there was no code behind for the main UserControl. Here is a link to the presentation video in WMV format. If you like you can see all the episodes and follow along with the tutorial. -
Hidden Object: Episode 12 – Custom Mouse Cursor Behavior
27 Oct 2009 | 7:07 amThis 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
5 Oct 2009 | 5:05 pmThis 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
4 Oct 2009 | 12:10 amIn 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…
