Saturday, October 29, 2005

Fingerprint payments taking off despite security concerns

Fingerprint payments taking off despite security concerns: "Fingerprint payments taking off despite security concerns
Robert Lemos, SecurityFocus 2005-10-07

Consumers embarking on a shopping spree may be able to leave their wallets behind in the near future, despite some security and privacy experts' concerns."

Two-factor banking

Two-factor banking: "Two-factor banking
Kelly Martin, 2005-10-18

People who lived through the Second World War, like my grandparents, had a very different view of money than those of us who grew up in the Information Age. Many of us still remember being told how foolish it is to keep one's life savings under a bed mattress, because the banks were known as trusted entities that will always do a better job of looking after your money. Even my grandparents, albeit reluctantly, came to realize that putting trust in financial institutions was the only way to go."

ONJava.com: AJAX: How to Handle Bookmarks and Back Buttons

ONJava.com: AJAX: How to Handle Bookmarks and Back Buttons: "

AJAX: How to Handle Bookmarks and Back Buttons
by Brad Neuberg
10/26/2005

This article presents an open source JavaScript library that finally brings bookmarking and back button support to AJAX applications. By the end of this tutorial, developers will have a solution to an AJAX problem that not even Google Maps or Gmail possesses: robust, usable bookmarking and back and forward behavior that works exactly like the rest of the Web."

ONLamp.com: Assessing Web App Security with Mozilla

ONLamp.com: Assessing Web App Security with Mozilla: "Assessing Web App Security with Mozilla
by Shreeraj Shah
10/20/2005

Web application assessment is a challenging task for security analysts. Several products and tools are available, each claiming to perform automated analysis on entire applications. Their capabilities include obtaining data, corroborating it, and printing aesthetically appealing reports--all without user intervention.

The nature of web applications is very different from that of standard applications. Many times, these tools miss key vulnerabilities in the application. The best way to perform web application assessment is by using the unassailable combination of automated tools and human intellect. This article examines the LiveHTTPHeaders project, which fits seamlessly into Mozilla browser components to facilitate very effective web application assessment."

W3C I18N Topic Index

W3C I18N Topic Index: "W3C I18N Topic Index

This page points to resources on the W3C Internationalization site that are distributed among articles, tutorials, tests and techniques documents. Its design is still a work in progress. The content will continually grow and change as resources are added to the site."

Creating Custom Generic Collections with J2SE 5.0

Creating Custom Generic Collections with J2SE 5.0: "Creating Custom Generic Collections with J2SE 5.0
J2SE 5.0 introduced many additions to the collections API that you need to be aware of to properly implement generic custom collections that work seamlessly with multiple types and the new 'for each' construct.

by Jeff Heaton October 18, 2005

My last article discussed how to use J2SE 5.0's new collection features, allowing you to designate a specific type to be used with a collection. Additionally, the new 'for each' construct lets you access collections without the need for an 'iterator'. However, that was only half the story. This article shows you how to create collections that are compatible with the latest features of J2SE."

Get Familiar with J2SE 5.0 Collections

Get Familiar with J2SE 5.0 Collections: "
Get Familiar with J2SE 5.0 Collections
Although you may be completely at ease with Java collections in previous versions, J2SE 5.0 collections are both simpler and different, requiring less code—but altered programming techniques.

by Jeff Heaton September 8, 2005

The collections API has always been one of the most important aspects of the Java Development Kit (JDK). Nearly every Java program makes use of collection classes such as HashMap, ArrayList, TreeSet and many others, each of which stores data in a variety of ways. Therefore, nearly every Java programmer must have a good understanding of how these classes work and when each is appropriate. But with the release of J2SE 5.0, everything about the way you use these classes has just changed!"

Add Object Cache Monitoring Using JMX and Aspects

Add Object Cache Monitoring Using JMX and Aspects: "Add Object Cache Monitoring Using JMX and Aspects
Find out how to add cache monitoring to your applications using JMX MBeans and AOP technologies—without altering the application code.

by Srini Penchikala October 20, 2005

Like many companies, my company uses an object cache to store frequently accessed data in memory so the server doesn't have to access the back-end database every time it handles a request for the same data. Caching provides advantages such as application performance improvement, scalability and minimizes the overhead required to acquire and release the objects."

Using XML in Java Gets Easier with DOM4J

Using XML in Java Gets Easier with DOM4J: "Using XML in Java Gets Easier with DOM4J
Have you experienced the pain of parsing and extracting XML data inside Java applications? Then you'll love DOM4J. Find out how flexible, high-performance, and memory-efficient implementations of this XML framework can ease the hardships of XML-based Java application development.

by Raghu Donepudi September 2, 2005"

Sequoia: Welcome to the Sequoia Project!

Sequoia: Welcome to the Sequoia Project!: "What is Sequoia?
Sequoia is a transparent middleware solution for offering clustering, load balancing and failover services for any database. Sequoia is the continuation of the C-JDBC project∞. The database is distributed and replicated among several nodes and Sequoia balances the queries among these nodes. Sequoia handles node failures and provides support for checkpointing and hot recovery."

Wikka: Welcome to Wikka Wiki

Wikka: Welcome to Wikka Wiki: "What is Wikka?
WikkaWiki is a flexible, standards-compliant and lightweight wiki engine written in PHP, which uses MySQL to store pages. Forked from WakkaWiki. Designed for speed, extensibility, and security. Released under the GPL license."

Nice features - doublke click to edit page and has visual editing

Friday, October 28, 2005

: "Google Subdomains found on 24 Oct 2005:"

With console.google.com being the most weird

FreeTTS 1.2 - A speech synthesizer written entirely in the Java(TM) programming language

FreeTTS 1.2 - A speech synthesizer written entirely in the Java(TM) programming language: "Introduction

FreeTTS is a speech synthesis system written entirely in the JavaTM programming language. It is based upon Flite: a small run-time speech synthesis engine developed at Carnegie Mellon University. Flite is derived from the Festival Speech Synthesis System from the University of Edinburgh and the FestVox project from Carnegie Mellon University." And yes I have blogged about this before.

dom4j - dom4j: the flexible XML framework for Java

dom4j - dom4j: the flexible XML framework for Java: "dom4j is an easy to use, open source library for working with XML, XPath and XSLT on the Java platform using the Java Collections Framework and with full support for DOM, SAX and JAXP."

Machine Learning Project

Machine Learning Project: "Weka Machine Learning Project
An exciting and potentially far-reaching development in computer science is the invention and application of methods of machine learning. These enable a computer program to automatically analyse a large body of data and decide what information is most relevant. This crystallised information can then be used to automatically make predictions or to help people make decisions faster and more accurately."

Taste Documentation

Taste Documentation: "Taste is a flexible, fast collaborative filtering engine for Java. The engine takes users' preferences for items ('tastes') and returns estimated preferences for other items. For example, a site that sells books or CDs could easily use Taste to figure out, from past purchase data, which CDs a customer might be interested in listening to."

NewsForge | OpenOffice.org 2.0 released

NewsForge | OpenOffice.org 2.0 released: "OpenOffice.org 2.0 released
Friday October 21, 2005 (07:00 PM GMT)
By: Stephen Feller


The OpenOffice.org (OOo) Project released the long-awaited OOo 2.0 suite yesterday, completing a testing process that lasted more than a year.

Planned improvements for OOo version 2.0 were laid out for developers in mid-2003, including a new interface, the new database module, enhanced PDF support, and other 'small things' to put the office suite on par with similar software, said Louis Suárez-Potts, the OOo community manager."

Monday, October 10, 2005

Jean-Francois Arcand's Blog: Grizzly: An HTTP Listener Using Java Technology NIO

Jean-Francois Arcand's Blog: Grizzly: An HTTP Listener Using Java Technology NIO: "Grizzly: An HTTP Listener Using Java Technology NIO
Posted by jfarcand on June 16, 2005 at 01:39 PM
Writing scalable server applications in Java technology has always been difficult. Before the advent of NIO, thread management issues made it impossible for an HTTP server to scale to thousands of users. I'm gonna start blogging on Grizzly, the HTTP Connector based on NIO shipped in GlassFish.

First, the truth: This is my first ever blog, I'm Quebecois and do a lot of typos (and speak with an ugly accent)..and I'm tempted to write in french...so there is still time to hit the back button of your browser!

For my first blog ever (and hopefully not the last), I will describe a new HTTP Connector based on NIO, called Grizzly on which I'm working on. Grizzly is currently the HTTP front-end for SJSAS PE 8.1 (throttled version), and included in the GlassFish project.

Grizzly has been designed to work on top of the Apache Tomcat Coyote HTTP Connector. The Coyote Connector is used in Tomcat 3/4/5 and has proven to be a highly performant HTTP Connector when it is time to measure raw throughput. But as other Java based HTTP Connector, scalability is always limited to the number of available threads, and when keep-alive is required, suffer the one thread per connection paradigm. Because of this, scalability is most of the time limited by the platform's maximum thread number. To solve this problem, people usually put Apache in front of Java, or use a cluster to distribute requests among multiple Java server."

The NIO based approach is exactly the paradigm shift that is required to solve the problems presented by creating scalable AJAX applications.

See also are-we-seeing-the-end-of-kitchen-sink-frameworks

Saturday, October 08, 2005

CSS: Specificity Wars | And all that Malarkey

CSS: Specificity Wars | And all that Malarkey: "CSS: Specificity Wars
"Join me, and together we can rule the galaxy as father and geeks!

A few weeks back in Cupertino, I saw Molly and Aaron explain how the specificity of CSS selectors is calculated in a way which I hadn't seen before. Then today I came across a knotty problem while building XHTML and CSS templates for a new project where two selectors behaved differently to how I expected and I realised that I had not completed my training."

inquisitor ~ instant search

inquisitor ~ instant search: "Inquisitor is an instant search technology that takes the waiting out of searching the web. It is an AJAX-style web application that retrieves web results and suggestions as-you-type.

What does it do? Well, just try it! Type in a test search like 'iPod' and see what happens.

Please note, Inquisitor is a beta service. At the moment, the service works best with either Firefox, Safari, or Opera (or a derivative like OmniWeb or Camino). It does work (albeit limitedly) with that other unmentionable browser, but since Firefox rocks so much, you should probably just use that.

Since this is brand-spanking new, it isn't yet feature complete. Bear with me, please."

Wow! This is awesome!

Yahoo! Next

Yahoo! Next: "What is Yahoo! Next?

It's a showcase of some of Yahoo!'s newest and coolest projects - the cutting edge of what Yahoo!'s doing today and working on for tomorrow!"

A9.com > OpenSearch

A9.com > OpenSearch: "OpenSearch is a collection of technologies, all built on top of popular open standards, to allow content providers to publish their search results in a format suitable for syndication. You can see how this works on A9.com.

Many sites today return search results as a tightly integrated part of the website itself. Unfortunately, those search results can't be easily reused or made available elsewhere, as they are usually wrapped in HTML and don't follow any one convention. OpenSearch offers an alternative: an open format that will enable those search results to be displayed anywhere, anytime. Rather than introduce yet another proprietary or closed protocol, OpenSearch is a straightforward and backward-compatible extension of RSS 2.0, the widely adopted XML-based format for content syndication."

Google Reader

Google Reader: "Reader makes it easier to keep up with your ever-expanding reading list of content from across the web.

* Spend your time reading what you care about most
Reader automatically gets the latest news and updates for your favorite sites. You can sort your reading list by relevance, which will guess what's most relevant to you based on how you use Google Reader (such as which items you decide to actually read).
* Find the blogs and news sites you've been missing out on
The amount of information on the web is rapidly increasing. Use Reader to discover new content you don't want to miss.
* Share interesting items with friends
When you come across something worth sharing, quickly email or blog it from within Reader. Star or labels items you want to save for yourself."

I'm going to HAVE to try this!

RED HERRING | Oracle Acquires Innobase

RED HERRING | Oracle Acquires Innobase: "Oracle Acquires Innobase

The software company buys an open-source database company for its 11th acquisition in less than a year.
October 7, 2005

Oracle said Friday it acquired Innobase, a company that develops open-source database technology, for an undisclosed sum, marking the software company’s 11th acquisition in less than a year."

Monday, October 03, 2005

Use Stored Procedures for Java Persistence

Use Stored Procedures for Java Persistence: "Use Stored Procedures for Java Persistence
Find out why you should use stored procedures to build your Java persistence layer instead of embedded SQL, entity beans, or tools such as Hibernate. Then learn how to do it.

by Eric Bruno September 26, 2005

Most software applications require a persistence layer, such as a relational database, to store user data for later retrieval. As a Java developer, you have many choices for your application's persistence layer. You can use entity beans with either container-managed persistence (CMP) or bean-managed persistence (BMP), or you can execute SQL queries from within your Java code through the Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) API."

Creating Voice Applications with Reusable Dialog Components

Creating Voice Applications with Reusable Dialog Components: "Creating Voice Applications with Reusable Dialog Components
Find out how J2EE, JSP, and Struts developers can use the Reusable Dialog Component (RDC) Open Source project along with VoiceXML to develop rich voice applications using standard Web progamming models.

by Aimee Silva September 30, 2005
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ne obstacle that's impeded the development of voice applications is the availability of a dedicated, standard or well-known development architecture. To create robust voice applications, voice developers have had to be familiar with many languages, techniques, architectures, and processes. Compounding this problem, voice applications are often built using proprietary markup languages. The emergence of the standard for VoiceXML 2.1 (and soon to come 3.0) eliminates some of this complexity, allowing voice developers to better focus their skills. VoiceXML allows you to adopt Web programming models for your voice applications, and implement them using a server-side framework—like Struts—in the same way you'd implement a Web applications. Using this kind of framework, you can make the transition from Web application to voice application much more easily."