Tuesday, January 31, 2006

A List Apart: Articles: In Search of the Holy Grail

A List Apart: Articles: In Search of the Holy Grail: "January 30, 2006
In Search of the Holy Grail
by Matthew Levine

In Search of the Holy Grail

I’m sorry. Really. I didn’t name it. I don’t mean to overstate its importance or trivialize the other and rather weightier Holy Grails.

But the name’s out there, and we all know what it means.

Three columns. One fixed-width sidebar for your navigation, another for, say, your Google Ads or your Flickr photos—and, as in a fancy truffle, a liquid center for the real substance. Its wide applicability in this golden age of blogging, along with its considerable difficulty, is what has earned the layout the title of Holy Grail."

Flock

Flock:

Flock - a web browser built upon Firefox - maybe this will be as good as Phoenix was when first released.

Monday, January 30, 2006

Mike Chambers: Learning Object Oriented JavaScript Programing from ActionScript

Mike Chambers: Learning Object Oriented JavaScript Programing from ActionScript: "January 27, 2006
Learning Object Oriented JavaScript Programing from ActionScript

I have been doing some JavaScript / Ajax development over the past couple of weeks, and have been trying to figure out the best way to structure my JavaScript and HTML code. One thing that really surprised me when doing research is how many JavaScript projects / examples do not try to encapsulate their code (aside from within script files) or use object oriented programing. Thinking back on this, and given the evolution of JavaScript from a web scripting glue to more of an application programing language, I can understand this, but it did surprise me none-the-less."

johnoxton.co.uk: Scalable logos

johnoxton.co.uk: Scalable logos: "Scalable logos

* John Oxton
* Monday January 30, 2006

To keep the background story brief; it was whilst putting together what will, one day soon, become the elastic layout for this site that I hit the problem of making my logo scale up or down when the user resizes the text, without lose of quality. Some time in the future Scalable Vector Graphics might be the answer, but for now I need something that is a little more mainstream and it doesn't come much more mainstream than the Flash player."

Sunday, January 29, 2006

Hacknot - The A to Z of Programmer Predilections

Hacknot - The A to Z of Programmer Predilections: "The A to Z of Programmer Predilections
24 Jan 2006

Introduction

There is a realization that comes with the accrual of software development experience across a reasonable number of organizations, and it is this:

Though the names change, the problems remain the same.

Traveling from project to project, from one organization to another, across disparate geographies, domains and technologies, I am repeatedly struck more by the similarities between the projects I work on than their differences. Scenes from one job seem to replay in the next one, only with a different set of actors."

DOM Scripting Task Force » Blog Archive » Shorter DOMScripting via cloning vs. generating new elements?

DOM Scripting Task Force » Blog Archive » Shorter DOMScripting via cloning vs. generating new elements?: "Shorter DOMScripting via cloning vs. generating new elements?
January 6th, 2006 by Christian Heilmann

Writing some scripts I realised lately that a lot of times we repeat code over and over again, especially when we generate HTML - like list items with embedded links. I wondered if it wouldn’t make sense that instead of creating those where we need them in the script it’ll be more slick to create them once and clone them via cloneNode() later on."

mezzoblue § Automaton

mezzoblue § Automaton: "Automaton
August 04, 2005 10AM PST

A question on automating database population for you server-side experts.

Let’s say you have a web site that you’ve been updating manually for a few years. Let’s also say that you’re sick to death of doing it this way, have finally taken the steps necessary to automate this thankless task, and now it’s finally time to throw all that manually-input data into a database. For the sake of argument, let’s also assume that adding the 700+ items by hand just isn’t going to happen."

Zimbra - Blog - AJAX and CSS Optimization

Zimbra - Blog - AJAX and CSS Optimization: "January 28, 2006
AJAX and CSS Optimization

Roland pointed me to an article about the amount of Javascript on digg.com's home page. Seems a few Digger's found it interesting. Well here at Zimbra we've got tons of Javascript and CSS in our AJAX web app. I decided to try an experiment to see if the techniques we use for Zimbra, a rather large AJAX app would help a site like digg."

TechCrunch

TechCrunch: "I’ve been testing NewsAlloy, a free, feature rich and very fast Ajax reader (zero page refreshes). All power-user features are included - tagging, pinning, river of news and folder-based viewing, easy digg and del.icio.us submission, and good search capabilities. I also like the keyboard shortcuts"

Saturday, January 28, 2006

AJAX sets off tools race | CNET News.com

AJAX sets off tools race | CNET News.com: "AJAX sets off tools race
By Martin LaMonica
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: January 26, 2006, 4:00 AM PST

The growing popularity of interactive Web sites has set off a race among software companies, each pitching their own development toolkit."

Tool for Ajax development with Java goes open source | News.blog | CNET News.com

Tool for Ajax development with Java goes open source | News.blog | CNET News.com: "Tool for Ajax development with Java goes open source
January 11, 2006 6:47 AM PST

Software company ClearNova said it will open-source a toolkit designed to make Java programmers more productive writing Ajax-style Web applications."

Friday, January 27, 2006

Java Project Founder Outlines Benefits of Restlet

Java Project Founder Outlines Benefits of Restlet: "Java Project Founder Outlines Benefits of Restlet
By Darryl K. Taft
January 9, 2006

Q&A: Jerome Louvel said that his Restlet Project, a Java framework which supports the REST architectural style, offers several advantages over Servlets. "

LinuxDevCenter.com: Linux Virtualization with Xen

LinuxDevCenter.com: Linux Virtualization with Xen: "Linux Virtualization with Xen
by Kris Buytaert
01/26/2006

Xen is the new virtualization kid on the block. It's gaining visibility and importance at a speed only projects such as Linux and Apache have seen before. Xen has been around for a couple of years: it was originally part of the Xenoserver platform, which aimed to build a public infrastructure for wide-area distributed computing. Ian Pratt, the principal investigator of the Xenoserver project at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, still leads the development team."

Object Generation: A Better Approach to Hibernate Integration

Object Generation: A Better Approach to Hibernate Integration: "Object Generation: A Better Approach to Hibernate Integration
If you're using Hibernate, your business objects may be littered with unnecessary code. Learn a different, proven approach that challenges conventional wisdom and promises more streamlined integration with less code.

by Lance Arlaus January 26, 2006

Hibernate is a practical, high-performance Java persistence framework. Using Hibernate is nearly transparent, but the one detail that even Hibernate can't hide is the notion of object identity and equality. It's a critical detail that typically infects all persistent objects with tedious and error-prone code. This article offers a different, proven approach for working with Hibernate that eliminates the clutter, and is both simple to incorporate and appropriate for most modern enterprise applications. "

Sun Launches Java Studio Creator 2 - Software -

Sun Launches Java Studio Creator 2 - Software -: "Sun Microsystems Relevant Products/Services from Emulex has introduced a new version of its Java Studio Creator tool for developing Web applications. Java Studio Creator 2 is specifically designed to speed up development of Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) software.

'AJAX is not a new technology, but a combination of existing technologies that is designed to make it easier for developers to create Web applications,' said Dan Roberts, Sun Microsystems' director of marketing for developer tools.

'Java Studio Creator 2 is part of Sun's efforts to meet demand for AJAX,' he said. 'It allows developers to encapsulate the style and the infrastructure Relevant Products/Services from MessageLabs required to build AJAX applications.'"

Thursday, January 26, 2006

O'Reilly Radar > Google Web Accelerator considered overzealous

O'Reilly Radar > Google Web Accelerator considered overzealous: "Google Web Accelerator considered overzealous Permalink
By rael on May 06, 2005

Some users of 37 Signals's new Backpack web application started noticing yesterday that their backpacks had been rifled through and a page here and there had simply disappeared. A little digging found Google's new Web Accelerator to be the culprit."

:) hmmm missed this first time around!

Digital Web Magazine - Web Presentation Patterns

Digital Web Magazine - Web Presentation Patterns: "By Jonathan Snook

Published on January 23, 2006

Patterns structure our lives, whether we think about them or not. A regular bedtime—and morning alarm and lunch time—makes your life easier by removing some of the guesswork.

Patterns play a part in Web application development, too. Design patterns are standard solutions to common problems in software design. Various patterns have been well-documented and allow us to learn and apply a proven methodology for development. It establishes a “design vocabulary” that can be shared between developers—a programming shorthand, as it were."

Digital Web Magazine - CSS Typography

Digital Web Magazine - CSS Typography: "By Garrett Dimon

Published on January 16, 2006

You don’t often see “CSS” and “typography” used in the same sentence—and for good reason. Traditional typography is a very subtle and beautiful form of design, with thousands of variations and choices. Unfortunately, with CSS that’s not quite the case. Don’t lose hope just yet, though. CSS can do more than you might think."

OnVoiceOver{{ Edition #2: WebPatterns

OnVoiceOver{{ Edition #2: WebPatterns: "Q&A: WebPatterns
by John Lampard

John Allsopp is a Sydney based software developer and co-founder of Westciv, producers of CSS editor, Style Master. He is also an organiser of the annual Web Essentials conference, and was one of the first members of the Web Standards Project.

In the first of our Q&A interview formats, we speak to John about his latest project: WebPatterns.

OnVoiceOver (OVO): So just what is a web pattern?

John Allsopp (JA): “Design Patterns” have been used in software development for coming up to 20 years now, and well known for at least a decade. The probably slightly badly named idea of “patterns” started in the early 1970s in the field of architecture, with a group of academic architects centred around Christopher Alexander."

Microsoft hopes to be nimble with new MSN Research Labs

Microsoft hopes to be nimble with new MSN Research Labs: "Microsoft hopes to be nimble with new MSN Research Labs

1/26/2006 12:25:05 PM, by Eric Bangeman

Hoping to better position itself to push new products and technologies out the door, Microsoft has unveiled its new Live Labs and Search Labs. Both groups, which will fall under the umbrella of the MSN Research Labs, will focus on research, developing, and bringing to market Internet-based services and technologies."

Google Code: Web Authoring Statistics

Google Code: Web Authoring Statistics: "Web Authoring Statistics
Introduction

Various people have, over the last few years, done studies into the popularity of authoring techniques. For example, looking at what HTML ids and classes are most common, and at how many sites validate (and yes, we know that we're not leading the way in terms of validation)."

BoĆ®te noire » These web sites are identical—or are they? 75% of web design is normative, the rest is merely color and pictures.

BoĆ®te noire » These web sites are identical—or are they? 75% of web design is normative, the rest is merely color and pictures.: "These web sites are identical—or are they?
75% of web design is normative, the rest is merely color and pictures."

dog or higher: Google web authoring statistics

dog or higher: Google web authoring statistics: "January 26, 2006
Google web authoring statistics

A couple of months back I published Real World Semantics where I used a little custom crawler to investigate the use of class and id values in the real world, to have a little look at just how semantic (or otherwise) the HTML out there is. I slanted the crawling toward sites that were 'close' to (within a few link steps) major standards based sites such as zeldman.com and stopdesign.com.

Now Google have published the results of a major web authoring analysis, of a billion pages (and I'm honored they mentioned my piece in their preamble). It goes far beyond just the use of class and id, to the use of headers, scripting, elements, and even editors.

Fascinating stuff!"

dog or higher: Semantics in the wild

dog or higher: Semantics in the wild: "November 05, 2005
Semantics in the wild

Regular readers will I hope by now have guessed that I am less of a fan of 'handwaving' and more of research when it comes to reasoning about and understanding what developers actually do.

For a long time now, I've been very interested in how developers use semantics in their pages - not just the semantics provided by HTML, like headings, but also the semantics developers create through the use of class and id values."

New in JavaScript 1.6 - MDC

New in JavaScript 1.6 - MDC: "ECMAScript for XML (E4X) is a powerful technology for creating and processing XML content within JavaScript. We're going to continue to improve our E4X support, including adding transparent integration with the existing DOM, but developers who are building XML-based web applications can benefit from E4X support in Firefox 1.5."

Archive of W3C News in 2006

Archive of W3C News in 2006: "2006-01-24: The Voice Browser Working Group has released an updated Working Draft of State Chart XML (SCXML): State Machine Notation for Control Abstraction 1.0. SCXML is an execution environment based on UML Harel State Tables and CCXML. SCXML is a candidate for the control language within VoiceXML 3.0, CCXML 2.0, and the authoring language under development by the Multimodal Interaction Working Group. Visit the Voice Browser home page."

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

The PC Doctor » Blog Archive » UltraMon - The tool you need if you have dual monitors!

The PC Doctor » Blog Archive » UltraMon - The tool you need if you have dual monitors!: "I run systems that have dual monitors because I find that having two monitors on a system is a LOT more productive that just one in a myriad little ways. If you’ve got the space then I recommend that you make the switch."

Must try the demo.

Novemberborn: Getting Funky With Scopes and Closures

Novemberborn: Getting Funky With Scopes and Closures: "This lets you do some really cool things. Ever wanted to create private methods in JavaScript? Now you can!"

Note this is an improvement on the prototype solution - need to check the differences between scope of function declarations in prototype and in general functions.

PowerPoint Presentation - Hacking Apache HTTP Server at Yahoo!

PowerPoint Presentation - Hacking Apache HTTP Server at Yahoo!
Since 1996, Yahoo has been running Apache HTTP Server on thousands of servers and serving billions of requests a day. This session reveals the secrets of how Yahoo gets maximum performance out of minimal hardware by tweaking configuration directives and hacking the source code. Radwin will cover topics such as reducing bandwidth costs, extensible logfile format and rotation schemes, dumping core gracefully, and how to avoid the dreaded MaxClients, Max/MinSpareServers, StartServers configuration nightmare.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Content Matters: November 2005

Content Matters: November 2005: "The 50 Content Companies that Matter: Endeca

Today, I add Endeca to the Fifty Content Companies that Matter.

Endeca offers a variation on search which they call Guided Navigation. Guided Navigation is a fairly simple concept, which enables users to drill down on various attributes of their search results, to continually narrow and refine the results."

Oracle's ADF Faces donation to Apache – FAQ

Oracle's ADF Faces donation to Apache – FAQ: "What is Oracle announcing?
Oracle is announcing the donation of ADF Faces to the Apache Software Foundation. ADF Faces is a rich set of UI components based on the JavaServer Faces specification. This donation will be licensed under the Apache 2.0 license. The donation was originally part of Oracle ADF, what it will be called in the future will soon be democratically determined by the Apache MyFaces community."

Monday, January 23, 2006

The Oracle 10g Data Pump API Speeds Up the ETL Process

The Oracle 10g Data Pump API Speeds Up the ETL Process: "The Oracle 10g Data Pump API Speeds Up the ETL Process
How can you keep slow extract, transform, and load operations from bogging down your production instance? Oracle 10g's Data Pump API offers a great solution.

by Natalka Roshak January 20, 2006"

Saturday, January 21, 2006

XML.com: Tuning AJAX

XML.com: Tuning AJAX: "Tuning AJAX
by Dave Johnson
November 30, 2005

Unless you live under a rock, you've heard about and likely even used AJAX. Asynchronous JavaScript and XML is becoming an increasingly pervasive deployment methodology, which necessitates that people start to both understand how it works and actually consider it more seriously as an enterprise-level development tool. To that end, I will try to illustrate one method of benchmarking your AJAX applications as well as point out some of the major performance pitfalls I have encountered while developing AJAX components and applications."

XML.com: All Aboard AJAX, HTML Canvas, and the Supertrain

XML.com: All Aboard AJAX, HTML Canvas, and the Supertrain: "All Aboard AJAX, HTML Canvas, and the Supertrain
by Dave Hoover
January 18, 2006

Apple's Safari browser introduced the canvas HTML element, allowing web developers to create two-dimensional drawings using a simple JavaScript API. With the recent release of Firefox 1.5, canvas took a significant step toward the mainstream (canvas is currently being considered for inclusion in HTML 5). Unfortunately, Microsoft holds most of the cards in this game, meaning that it could be a long time before they release a canvas-friendly version of Internet Explorer. In the meantime, though, the Web 2.0 revolution continues, and I believe that for applications that can sacrifice IE users, the canvas element is an untapped resource, particularly in light of the emergence of JavaScript libraries that provide simple interfaces to XMLHttpRequest. I dabbled with canvas and XHR, and I was impressed. (The irony that canvas and XHR come respectively from Apple and Microsoft should not be overlooked.) :-)"

Continuing Intermittent Incoherency » JavaScript Idioms Every Webdev Should Grok

Continuing Intermittent Incoherency » JavaScript Idioms Every Webdev Should Grok: "Wed 18 Jan 2006
JavaScript Idioms Every Webdev Should Grok
Posted by alex under programming , javascript


JavaScript (the language, not the browser bindings for the DOM, etc.) can be either brutally hard or refreshingly flexible. It’s difficulty is directly related to how well you grok a couple of core concepts. I’m going to just list them and leave in-depth explanations to Tom’s forthcoming book on advanced JavaScript."

JavaScript: Passing by Value or by Reference - snook.ca

JavaScript: Passing by Value or by Reference - snook.ca: "JavaScript: Passing by Value or by Reference
January 18, 2006 | JavaScript

In JavaScript, we have functions and we have arguments that we pass into those functions. But how JavaScript handles what you’re passing in is not always clear. When you start getting into object-oriented development, you may find yourself perplexed over why you have access to values sometimes but not other times."

Friday, January 20, 2006

FireBug - JoeHewitt.com

FireBug - JoeHewitt.com: "FireBug is a new tool for Firefox that aids with debugging Javascript, DHTML, and Ajax. It is like a combination of the Javascript Console, DOM Inspector, and a command line Javascript interpreter."

Curiosity is bliss: "Take It With You" Wiki

Curiosity is bliss: "Take It With You" Wiki: "Some background:
Two problems ran in circles in my head while I was on vacation a couple of weeks ago: how to make cross-domain XMLHttp requests before cross-domain is actually supported by browsers and how to allow web applications to run offline?
I started by focusing on the first one, probably because I've been toying recently with cross-domain XMLHttp and client-side storage through Greasemonkey. Also, I was thinking that it would help for running local/offline copies of web apps.

The problem with using Greasemonkey to extend the browser is that it's not widely available and it doesn't offer good control over cross-domain requests. A Flash and Javascript combination, such as the Flash-based Canvas or AMASS storage, seemed like a better solution."

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Blonde Joke

Blonde Joke: "Blonde Joke

Ha ha ha ha… this blonde joke had me rolling on the floor.

Enjoy!

posted on Saturday, January 14, 2006 3:20 PM "

This is kinda funny.

jQuery: New Wave Javascript

jQuery: New Wave Javascript: "jQuery is a new type of Javascript library. It is not a huge, bloated, framework promising the best in AJAX - nor is just a set of needlessly complex enhancements - jQuery is designed to change the way that you write Javascript."

@media 2006

@media 2006: "Welcome Back!

The @media conference returns to London on 15th-16th June, bigger and better than before. It's the event of the year for anyone interested in learning about and discussing the latest approaches to web design with some of the world's most highly respected experts."

ONJava.com: Using Lucene to Search Java Source Code

ONJava.com: Using Lucene to Search Java Source Code: "Using Lucene to Search Java Source Code
by Renuka Sindhgatta
01/18/2006

Several websites allow the software development community to share information by publishing developer guidelines, white papers, FAQs, and source code. As the information content grows, with several developers contributing to the repository, websites provide search engines to search all of the information present on the site. While the search engines do a very good job in retrieving text documents, they severely constrain a developer when searching source code. Search engines consider source code files as plain text documents and hence and are no different from a sophisticated grep tool capable of handling large source files.

In this article I propose the approach of using Lucene, the Java-based open source search engine, to search source code by extracting and indexing relevant source code elements. I restrict the search to Java source code only. However, extending the search to any other programming language's source code should not be very different."

Rapid Java Web Application Development with Tapestry

Rapid Java Web Application Development with Tapestry: "Introducing Tapestry
Tapestry is an open-source framework for object-oriented, component-based Java Web application development. Simply put, instead of dealing with the Servlet API or with Struts Actions, the Tapestry programmer stores user data with object properties and handles user actions with event-handling methods.

Another major feature of Tapestry is its use of HTML page templates. In Tapestry, each page is an HTML template containing browser-friendly HTML tags. Unlike JSP, JSTL, or JSF pages, creating Tapestry pages is relatively easy using common Web design tools, and you can preview them in a Web browser.

This article demonstrates a few of the main features of Tapestry, and shows how Tapestry 4, released in December 2005, makes things even easier than previous versions. "

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

BlinkList | Your personal start page and social bookmarking engine

BlinkList | Your personal start page and social bookmarking engine: "BlinkList is Social Bookmarking merged with People Powered Search
and Expert Recommendations... all wrapped in an elegant interface"

Del.icio.us Alternative

Simon Willison: JSON and Yahoo!'s JavaScript APIs

Simon Willison: JSON and Yahoo!'s JavaScript APIs: "JSON and Yahoo!'s JavaScript APIs

I had the pleasure yesterday of seeing Douglas Crockford speak about JSON, the ultra-simple data interchange format he has been promoting as an alternative to XML. JSON is a subset of JavaScript, based around that language's array, string and object literal syntax.

As of today, JSON is supported as an alternative output format for nearly all of Yahoo!'s Web Service APIs. This is a Really Big Deal, because it makes Yahoo!'s APIs available to JavaScript running anywhere on the web without any of the normal problems caused by XMLHttpRequest's cross domain security policy.

Like JSON itself, the workaround is simple."


This is liked to by the previous link: Excellent Ajax Article with LOTS of informative comments

QuirksBlog: The AJAX response: XML, HTML, or JSON?

QuirksBlog: The AJAX response: XML, HTML, or JSON?: "The AJAX response: XML, HTML, or JSON?

Since my last AJAX project I've increasingly been wondering about the "ideal" output format for the AJAX response. Once you've succesfully fired an AJAX request, what sort of response should the server give? An XML document? An HTML snippet? A JSON string which is converted to a JavaScript object? Or something else? In this entry I'd like to discuss the three formats, with examples, and ask you which format you've used in your practical AJAX applications."

Ajaxian » XmlHttpRequest

Ajaxian » XmlHttpRequest: "Wednesday, June 22nd, 2005
Anonymous Classes in JavaScript and the XMLHttpRequest API

Category: JavaScriptView the technorati tag: JavaScript, XmlHttpRequestView the technorati tag: XmlHttpRequest, ArticlesView the technorati tag: Articles

Todd Ditchendorf has written up his thoughts on JavaScript, and API usage.

He discusses the XmlHttpRequest API, and some of its ugliness, and gets into the way popular wrappers of the API work"

Ajaxian » JavaScript Tip: Running code in the dark

Ajaxian » JavaScript Tip: Running code in the dark: "Thursday, January 12th, 2006
JavaScript Tip: Running code in the dark

Category: JavaScriptView the technorati tag: JavaScript, TipView the technorati tag: Tip

At a recent client, we were finding strange behaviour occuring in the JavaScript side of the house.

After taking a look, the problem was namespace collisions.

A couple of the developers were new to JavaScript, and didn’t know about the scoping world."

Christian Cantrell

Christian Cantrell: "December 07, 2005
del.icio.us uses Flash

I'm a big del.icio.us user, but I learned something about them yesterday I didn't know. During a conversation with Andre Charland, he mentioned that del.icio.us is using Flash to play MP3s. Check out my podcast tag to see what I mean. Whenever you tag an MP3, a little play arrow appears to the left of the title. Click it, and a piece of Flash is dynamically loaded to play the MP3. Simple, but slick."

Christian Cantrell: Flash and Ajax: Happy Together

Christian Cantrell: Flash and Ajax: Happy Together: "January 05, 2006
Flash and Ajax: Happy Together

Adaptive Path recently released their Flash/JavaScript Date Slider under a Creative Commons License. It's a very slick component that they use with Measure Map for visually selecting date ranges, and which shows excellent interoperability between Flash and JavaScript. It uses the JavaScript / Flash Integration Kit as the bridge between Flash and JavaScript, and I think integrates very nicely into HTML/Ajax applications."

Chris Shiflett: Security Corner: Cross-Site Request Forgeries

Chris Shiflett: Security Corner: Cross-Site Request Forgeries: "Security Corner: Cross-Site Request Forgeries

by Chris Shiflett

Welcome to another edition of Security Corner. This month's topic is cross-site request forgeries, a style of attack that lets an attacker send arbitrary HTTP requests from a victim user. That's worth reading a couple of times, and it will likely not be until you've seen your first example attack that you can fully understand or appreciate the danger."

Chris Shiflett: Google XSS Example

Chris Shiflett: Google XSS Example: "Wed, 21 Dec 2005
Google XSS Example

Related: Google's Cross-Site Scripting Vulnerability

In the comments to my previous blog post, Ivo Jansch asks:

To be able to comprehend how this may affect my website, could you explain how this could be exploited, even though you cannot demonstrate it?

Rather than offer another vague answer, I decided to provide a very simple proof of concept that demonstrates how character encoding inconsistencies can bite you. Google's vulnerability has of course been fixed, but with a simple PHP script, we can reproduce the situation"

Google Talkabout: YT?...Google Talk for BlackBerry

Google Talkabout: YT?...Google Talk for BlackBerry: "Thursday, January 12, 2006
YT?...Google Talk for BlackBerry
I was at CES last week with the Google Talk team and several people asked me if Google Talk would be available on cell phones and other mobile devices. I said absolutely, since that's one of the goals of the open platform on which we built Google Talk. We believe that users should have their choice in client, platform, and service provider. We'd like them to have the ability to communicate on the devices they find most useful."

Ari Paparo Dot Com: Getting it Right

Ari Paparo Dot Com: Getting it Right: "Mistake: Folders Suck

Our first iteration on using bookmarks to create a shared information library was an extension of the 'public folder' concept. We believed that users would not only make their folders public, but also would categorize those folders into a directory structure. We called this the 'Public Library' and created a Yahoo-like node structure on which users could post. This could have made sense since categorizing folders would be less work than categorizing individual bookmarks – after all, the folders were already 'categories' of a sort."

Blog before you Think!: What's wrong with RSS?

Blog before you Think!: What's wrong with RSS?: "What's wrong with RSS?

11/22/2005 04:16:00 PM
Part of my jobdescription at the MoMB is to keep an eye on webapps which are not public yet. Some are pretty much in stealth mode, some are in closed alpha or beta, but most of them encourage you to leave your email address for being notified if they go public. None of them offers a RSS or Atom feed for this notification though, and I really wonder why."

Correct-a-mundo.

Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report

Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report: "20 October 2005 5 pm edt
Ma.gnolia

“Found is the New Search,” the page proclaims. Zen koan? Nope. George Orwell outtake? Uh-uh. It’s the thought-provoking slogan of Ma.gnolia, an upcoming social bookmarking service now in pre-launch, sign-up mode.

The temporary site’s design is not only lovely, it is also unusual, suggesting levels of thought and depth rarely seen in the category. What a pity this beautiful mini-site will have to die!

I know something about the product that’s coming, and look forward excitedly to its release. You might want to sign up."


http://ma.gnolia.com/

SitePoint Blogs » Usability and accessibility with Ajax

SitePoint Blogs » Usability and accessibility with Ajax: "Usability and accessibility with Ajax

by Simon Willison

The Ajax express train rumbles on, threatening to crush anything in its path. Recent discussion has turned to those critical elements of good web development, usability and accessibility. Accessibility is a major issue with Ajax, mainly because anything that relies on JavaScript to function is inaccessible pretty much by default. There are two solutions: either provide a fall-back system where the site remains useful without its Ajax enhancements, or provide a whole separate interface that works without scripting."

A List Apart: Articles: The Accessibility Hat Trick: Getting Abbreviations Right

A List Apart: Articles: The Accessibility Hat Trick: Getting Abbreviations Right: "First Goal: Standards

Our first goal is compliance with XHTML 2.0. In version 2, the acronym element has been deprecated, so we’re now using the abbr element for all shortened forms."

Is this really such a good idea given:

"JAWS and initialisms

CSS2 has defined properties for screen-reading software that are meant to help separate abbreviations that should be spoken as whole words from those that should be spoken as initials."

There are plenty of different types of abbreviation surely structural markup is the best place for them, not presentational css. If we wish to markup BBC as an initialism surely the markup would be the place to do it - not CSS.

A List Apart: Articles: Web 3.0

A List Apart: Articles: Web 3.0: "January 16, 2006
Web 3.0
by Jeffrey Zeldman

Bubble, bubble

When I started designing websites, if the guy on the plane next to me asked what I did, I had to say something like “digital marketing” if I wanted to avoid the uncomprehending stare.

A few years later, if I told the passenger beside me I was a web designer, he or she would regard me with a reverence typically reserved for Stanley-Cup-winning Nobel Laureate rock stars.

Then the bubble burst, and the same answer to the same question provoked looks of pity and barely concealed disgust. I remember meeting a high-rolling entrepreneur in the early 2000s who asked what I did. I should have told him I hung around playgrounds, stealing children’s lunch money. He would have had more respect for that answer."

Monday, January 16, 2006

Ajax for Java developers: Java object serialization for Ajax

Ajax for Java developers: Java object serialization for Ajax: "Ajax for Java developers: Java object serialization for Ajax

Five ways to serialize data in Ajax applications
developerWorks

Level: Intermediate

Philip McCarthy (philmccarthy@gmail.com), Software Development Consultant, Independent Consultant

04 Oct 2005

If you're doing Java™ Web development using Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax), then delivering data from the server to the client is probably your top concern. In this second article in the Ajax for Java developers series, Philip McCarthy walks you through five approaches to Java object serialization and gives you all the information you need to choose the data format and technology best suited to your application."

My Cave Online - StringBuffer.toString() doesn't share contents in 1.5

My Cave Online - StringBuffer.toString() doesn't share contents in 1.5: "Re: StringBuffer.toString() doesn't share contents in 1.5
It wasn't confusion that made them kill the feature, it was the potential for massive memory leaks that did it in. Check the Sun bug database it's in there. But a quick example would be stuffing a StringBuffer with text from a file and running a regex over it. Your regex finally matches so you say return regex.group(). Now, the substring you matched contains 10 chars of a 1,000,000 char array, which can't get GC'ed because you are holding on to 10 of them."

rico.tigris.org

rico.tigris.org: "Description
Rico is a JavaScript library for creating rich internet applications. Rico provides full Ajax support, drag and drop management, cinematic effects library and a growing set of rich ajax enabled behaviors (accordion, data grid...)"

Looks Good Works Well: July 2005

Looks Good Works Well: July 2005: "Sunday, July 10, 2005
Thin Ajax Clients - Model-View-Controller

Ok, I normally try to post just on the design side of things. But as you can tell I wear two hats: Technology and Design. This blog is on the technology side of things.

With the introduction of the LiveGrid behavior on our openrico.org site I have received a lot of good questions about how to do things like sorting, filtering, selection, editing, column re-ordering, searching, deleting, creating, etc."

Looks Good Works Well: June 2005

Looks Good Works Well: June 2005: "Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Death to Paging! - Rico LiveGrid Released

Ok, How About a Revolution?Aren't you tired of getting a chunk of search results from Google, Yahoo, A9, product listings, real estate pages, etc.? And then having to scroll to the bottom and hit the 'next page?'. In the words of Andy Rooney, 'I know am!' What I normally do is search, scroll through results to the bottom of the page, scroll back up to double-check, then I have to scroll back down to navigate to the next page. Seems like a lot of bother to just move through my results."

Rico

Rico: "BACKGROUND

The goal of Rico is to provide a rich experience for web sites using Ajax technology.

Rico originated as work done in Sabre Airline Solutions to create a suite of rich internet components, behaviors and effects for the web application space

The library is a fully object-oriented JavaScript and extends on the excellent prototype.js effort from the Ruby on Rails folks."

Enterprise Java Community: Web 2.01, a rich internet application example

Enterprise Java Community: Web 2.01, a rich internet application example: "Web 2.01, a rich internet application example


January 2006
Discussion

Summary:

Learn about what I call 'Web 2.01,' a fusion of 'Web 2.0' style application content with a 'Rich Internet Application' client, which is not subject to many of the limitations of a web browser."

Six Sides To A Box - Google Maps API: Adding Where to Your Applications

Six Sides To A Box - Google Maps API: Adding Where to Your Applications: "Google Maps API: Adding Where to Your Applications

'Google Maps API: Adding Where to Your Applications' by Scott Davis is the second release in The Pragmatic Programmers Pragmatic Fridays series. A Friday is described as 'a short, highly focused book, typically addressing a specific technical topic.' They are low cost, and available only as DRM-free PDFs. It should also be noted that they are only available from The Pragmatic Programmers."

Eric's weblog - JavaScript Quick Tip: Logging ClientSide Errors

Eric's weblog - JavaScript Quick Tip: Logging ClientSide Errors: "JavaScript Quick Tip: Logging ClientSide Errors

As a developer you know how things work and always do the same actions, you say hey look error free. Get a user that has a happy click finger and watch your application die right before your eyes. Wait it will not be before your eyes since you have no clue where this user is sitting using your application. Since it is a clientside error will not even know that this is happening! One thing people seem to forget is that these wonderful clientside applications may be full of errors and destroy your application. Bug free code is a dream, but with browser quirks and such, you can never test everything. So we probably need to do something about this. "

Where was I when the brains were given out? This is awesome! Combining window.onerror with an Ajax posting of the error message back to the server is an excellent way to log frontend errors.

Google gets personal with mobiles - vnunet.com

Google gets personal with mobiles - vnunet.com: "Google gets personal with mobiles

Personalised homepage now available to mobile users
Tom Sanders in California, vnunet.com 16 Jan 2006

Google has expanded its personalised homepage to mobile devices, offering a portal-like website with optional services including emails from users' Gmail accounts, news headlines, weather information, stock quotes and RSS feeds."

Might be nice if there was actually a search box on it instead of just a link to the search page.

Saturday, January 14, 2006

O'Reilly CodeZoo

O'Reilly CodeZoo: "The most popular component on CodeZoo is FindBugs, the Java tool for automatically detecting potential bugs in your code. Over on java.net, David Herron looks at Findbugs, and gives a good commentary on its use."

ProgrammableWeb: Web 2.0 API Reference

ProgrammableWeb: Web 2.0 API Reference: "Web 2.0 API Reference

142 APIs. Do you know another? Share it here.
New! Subscribe to the RSS Feed API Feed and get notified for all new and updated API entries."

Adobe Motion Design Center- Galleries, articles, and tips on motion and interactive design

Adobe Motion Design Center- Galleries, articles, and tips on motion and interactive design

MOTION DESIGN CENTER
About this Site

Welcome to the Adobe Motion Design Center, a new site dedicated to helping you explore, learn, and connect with the latest in the world of motion design and technology. As new creative opportunities emerge, it is your ideas that will define the next wave of communications — infusing commerce and culture with the power of good design. This site is dedicated to helping you refine and perfect those ideas — today and into the future.

script.aculo.us - web 2.0 javascript

script.aculo.us - web 2.0 javascript: "Welcome to script.aculo.us!

The Web is changing. The 30-year-old terminal-like technology it was originally is gradually giving way to new ways of doing things. The power of AJAX allows for rich user interaction without the trouble that has bugged traditional web applications. Building upon the wonderful Prototype JavaScript library, script.aculo.us provides you with some great additional ingredients to mix in. "

Statistical AJAX // Ordered List by Steve Smith

Statistical AJAX // Ordered List by Steve Smith: "Statistical AJAX

December 9th, 2005

These days the term ‘AJAX’ seems almost as overused as ‘drop-shadow’ was 18 months ago. But despite the weariness of terminology, the technology behind live communication between browser and server is producing a more flexible, usable web. I have even included said technology in a few recent projects at Notre Dame with some very successful results.

One must be careful, however, as AJAX comes with its own pitfalls, just as any other web technology. Depending on the requirements for the application, a developer must focus on degradation and user expectation, among other accessibility issues. On the bright side, methods exists to accomplish these goals, and these methods are becoming more widely available as time goes on."

Wired News: Covert Crawler Descends on Web

Wired News: Covert Crawler Descends on Web: "Covert Crawler Descends on Web

By Quinn Norton | Also by this reporter

WASHINGTON DC -- Websites get looked at by two different kinds of visitors: the human ones who peer around, look at the graphics, think about the links and click slowly; and the spiders, those automated scanners that come in from search engines like Google, or, more ominously, from malicious attackers, competing businesses and spammers looking for e-mail addresses.

Fortunately, it has always been pretty easy to tell the difference between the two in server logs, and block unwanted or anti-social crawlers. But research presented at the Shmoo Con hacker conference here Friday may change that.

Billy Hoffman, an engineer at Atlanta company SPI Dynamics unveiled a new, smarter web-crawling application that behaves like a person using a browser, rather than a computer program. 'Basically this nullifies any traditional form of forensics,' says Hoffman."

- Web 2.0 Central: Web2.0, Ajax, Beta, Alpha, Startup, Companies

- Web 2.0 Central: Web2.0, Ajax, Beta, Alpha, Startup, Companies: "About Us
Web 2.0 Central profiles companies and startups building web based applications using technologies like Ajax, Ruby on Rails, Flash, RSS, Open API's and assorted web based application development tools."

TekMonkey.org

TekMonkey.org: "Software Engineering, Not Computer Science
January 13, 2006
All credit goes to Steve McConnell, I merely transcribed it here for convenience. The original PDF can be viewed here.


* 'A scientist builds in order to learn; an engineer learns in order to build.'
- Fred Brooks


When interviewing candidates for programming jobs, one of my favorite interview questions is, 'How would you describe your approach to software development?' I give them examples such as carpenter, fire fighter, architect, artist, author, explorer, scientist, and archeologist, and I invite them to come up with their own answers. Some candidates try to second-guess what I want to hear; they usually tell me they see themselves as 'scientists.' Hot-shot coders tell me they see themselves as commandos or swat-team members. My favorite answer came from a candidate who said, 'During software design, I'm an architect. When I'm designing the user interface, I'm an artist. During construction, I'm a craftsman. And during unit testing, I'm one mean son of a bitch!'

I like to pose this question because it gets at a fundamental issue in our field: What is the best way to think of software development? Is it science? Is it art? Is it craft? Is it something else entirely?"

Outstanding.

Garrett Dimon / The Time is Now for Front-End Architects

Garrett Dimon / The Time is Now for Front-End Architects: "The Time is Now for Front-End Architects
Friday January 13, 2006 / 5 Comments

Last year, I discussed the idea of a front-end architect over at YTS, and after considerably more time thinking about it, I’m even more confident today that it’s a necessary role.

While back-end technology has become more and more abstracted and powerful with frameworks like .Net, Rails, and their Java counterparts, the possibilities with front-end technology have grown increasingly complex. The web needs more front-end architects before poor implementations of front-end technology hobble the potential benefits of recent advances."

Ask Lifehacker Reader: Best blogging webapps? - Lifehacker

Ask Lifehacker Reader: Best blogging webapps? - Lifehacker: "The 2006 Bloggie Awards are underway and accepting nominations until 10PM Eastern time tonight. The first category? “Best Web Application for Weblogs - Something that helps you publish, make comments, anything that has to do with developing a weblog.”

My favorites include del.icio.us for remaindered links, Flickr for posting photos, and WordPress for posting overall. (The software that makes posting to Lifehacker feel like I’m sticking hot pins in my eyes, MovableType? Not so much.)

Now I’m curious about your picks. What webapps make publishing your blog easier? Let us know in the comments or at tips at lifehacker.com. And be sure to submit your nominations to the Bloggies!"

- Web 2.0 Central: Web2.0, Ajax, Beta, Alpha, Startup, Companies

- Web 2.0 Central: Web2.0, Ajax, Beta, Alpha, Startup, Companies: "Web 2.0 Central profiles companies and startups building web based applications using technologies like Ajax, Ruby on Rails, Flash, RSS, Open API's and assorted web based application development tools. "

eWEEK Labs Reviews: SUSE 10.0 and Ubuntu 5.10

eWEEK Labs Reviews: SUSE 10.0 and Ubuntu 5.10: "Upgrades Lift Ubuntu and SUSE
By Jason Brooks
October 31, 2005

You may not be ready to welcome Linux onto your organization's desktops, but that doesn't mean that desktop Linux isn't ready for you.

eWEEK Labs reviewed Canonical Ltd.'s Ubuntu 5.10 and Novell Inc.'s SUSE Linux 10.0, both of which began shipping in October, and we were impressed by the maturity, polish and, yes, innovation that these Penguin banner bearers displayed."

XP Secrets

XP Secrets: "Easter Eggs (Definition) - A hidden message or feature in an application. This guide covers the undocumented and hidden features in Windows XP. All of the following were tested in Windows XP only.
"

Mass Media Storage For PSP - Lifehacker

Mass Media Storage For PSP - Lifehacker: "Mass Media Storage For PSP
READ MORE: Gaming, Media center

The Sony PSP is more than just a kick butt hand-held gaming machine. It’s great for other media as well. Music, video, photos — you name it — the PSP can handle it, and with a killer screen to boot. One of it’s biggest problems is storage. Enter The Furrygoat Experience with a detailed tutorial about how to add 20GB of external storage."

Google Mobile

Google Mobile: "Google Personalized Home

Take your Google homepage with you everywhere.

Your Google personalized homepage puts the information you care about on one web page -- and now you can access that page on your mobile phone or device, in a phone-friendly format that's easy to read and navigate.

* Preview your latest Gmail messages
* See headlines from top news sources
* Get weather forecasts, stock quotes, and movie showtimes
* Choose from a variety of popular RSS and Atom feeds."

The Ten Best Ajax Links: Tutorials, Examples, and History > My Gadget Bag

The Ten Best Ajax Links: Tutorials, Examples, and History > My Gadget Bag: "Tuesday, November 15, 2005
~ The Ten Best Ajax Links: Tutorials, Examples, and History ~
Related Categories:

Asynchronous JavaScript and XML is the newest phenomenon to hit the net. I’m sure most of you have heard of it as the catchy little name of Ajax. Ajax is all the rage now if you want a trendy website. If you have a website, or portal you run; it will almost guarantee you get hits if you put some Ajax in there, and advertise that you have done so.

"

SAJAX - Simple Ajax Toolkit by ModernMethod - XMLHTTPRequest Toolkit for PHP

SAJAX - Simple Ajax Toolkit by ModernMethod - XMLHTTPRequest Toolkit for PHP: "Sajax is an open source tool to make programming websites using the Ajax framework — also known as XMLHTTPRequest or remote scripting — as easy as possible. Sajax makes it easy to call PHP, Perl or Python functions from your webpages via JavaScript without performing a browser refresh. The toolkit does 99% of the work for you so you have no excuse to not use it."

Mastering recursive programming

Mastering recursive programming: "Mastering recursive programming

Learning recursion yields maintainable, consistent, provably correct code

Level: Intermediate

Jonathan Bartlett (johnnyb@eskimo.com), Director of Technology, New Media Worx

16 Jun 2005

Recursion is a tool not often used by imperative language developers, because it is thought to be slow and to waste space, but as the author demonstrates, there are several techniques that can be used to minimize or eliminate these problems. He introduces the concept of recursion and tackle recursive programming patterns, examining how they can be used to write provably correct programs. Examples are in Scheme and C."

I love recursive programming - it looks really elegant when you create something - but I find it has to be documented or I don't understand it when it comes to be maintained. Oddly I have only HAD to use it once, when working on a generic custom list handling method in a game another (non-compsci trained) developer was writing but having trouble editing.

Main Page - Ajax Patterns

Main Page - Ajax Patterns: "We are uncovering new ways to weave the world wide web.

Welcome to AjaxPatterns.org, an Ajax portal and homepage for the upcoming 'Ajax Design Patterns' book (O'Reilly), with full text online. Maintained by Michael Mahemoff."

How to be a Programmer: A Short, Comprehensive, and Personal Summary

How to be a Programmer: A Short, Comprehensive, and Personal Summary: "How to be a Programmer: A Short, Comprehensive, and Personal Summary
Robert L Read

Copyright © 2002, 2003 Robert L. Read"

Computer Programming Algorithms Directory

Computer Programming Algorithms Directory: "Welcome to my computer programming algorithms directory. I am hoping to provide a comprehensive directory of web sites that detail algorithms for computer programming problems."

There are probably far better resources than this - but it will do for now.

Ajaxian » 2005 » November

Ajaxian » 2005 » November: "Wednesday, November 30th, 2005
Free Book Chapter: Google Maps API and Ajax

Category: BooksView the technorati tag: Books

The Pragmatic Programmers recently released a short title in their new Pragmatic Fridays set of short books.

Their latest book is devoted to the Google Maps API, and the Pragmatic Programmers have given the chapter on Ajax for Ajaxian.com members to download for free."

Ajax Tutorial: Ajax What Is It Good For?

Ajax Tutorial: Ajax What Is It Good For? (Again)

As previous posting

Friday, January 13, 2006

Ajax Tutorial: Ajax What Is It Good For?

Ajax Tutorial: Ajax What Is It Good For?: "Ajax Tutorial: Ajax What Is It Good For?"

Lightbox JS

Lightbox JS: "Overview

Lightbox JS is a simple, unobtrusive script used to to overlay images on the current page. It's a snap to setup and works on all modern browsers."

TIME Puzzles: Brain Calisthenics

TIME Puzzles: Brain Calisthenics

Erm OK the word tricks (Stroop Test) is a lot harder than I thought it would be.

Geek to Live: Web search desktop launcher - Lifehacker

Geek to Live: Web search desktop launcher - Lifehacker: "Geek to Live: Web search desktop launcher
READ MORE: Active Desktop, Downloads, Exclusive Lifehacker Download, Feature, Geek to Live, Top, Windows"

Math Will Rock Your World

Math Will Rock Your World: "Math Will Rock Your World
A generation ago, quants turned finance upside down. Now they're mapping out ad campaigns and building new businesses from mountains of personal data "

A deviation from normal posts ... I'll read this later.

Analysis: Just how different are Intel-Macs from Intel PCs? | TG Daily

Analysis: Just how different are Intel-Macs from Intel PCs? | TG Daily: "Analysis: Just how different are Intel-Macs from Intel PCs?

Scott M. Fulton, III

12 Jan 2006 17:01



San Francisco (CA) - The very first Apple computers, distributed nationwide in 1977, had a hood you could pry off to reveal the CPU, the memory, and the motherboard. But almost three decades later, the company that pioneered 'open architecture' with the Apple II, even with thousands of admirers looking on, was reluctant to pry the back panel off its new Intel Core Duo-based iMacs and MacBook Pro portables."

SonSpring | Removing Dotted Links

SonSpring | Removing Dotted Links: "Fixing the Fox:

It is no secret, I love Firefox. I have been using it since the beta version of 0.8. Firefox 1.5 though, has a quirk that proves to be a minor irritation every time I use it. I am of course referring to the dotted outline that appears around every link. In versions previous to 1.5, the outline behaved similarly to Internet Explorer on Windows, wrapping exactly around clickable areas."

Magic with Merlin: Exceptions and logging

Magic with Merlin: Exceptions and logging: "Magic with Merlin: Exceptions and logging

Root out your problems and respond appropriately with these useful changes to the J2SE

Help us improve this content

Level: Introductory

John Zukowski (jaz@zukowski.net), President, JZ Ventures, Inc.

01 Dec 2001

The Merlin release adds several exception-handling-related features for understanding the root cause of a problem and responding appropriately. You can now examine a stack trace without having to manually parse the stack dump, and you can daisy chain exceptions, which allows you to attach the cause of an exception when you rethrow it, greatly enhancing debugging. Also, there is now a built-in logging facility to log different levels of messages. In this installment of Magic with Merlin, John Zukowski demonstrates how these new logging and exception features work and provides an example program for review and download."

Old stuff - but worthy of a revisit.

EJB best practices: Build a better exception-handling framework

EJB best practices: Build a better exception-handling framework: "
developerWorks > Java technology >
EJB best practices: Build a better exception-handling framework

Deliver more useful exceptions without sacrificing clean code

Level: Intermediate

Brett McLaughlin (brett@oreilly.com), Author and Editor, O'Reilly and Associates

01 Jan 2003

Enterprise applications are often built with little attention given to exception handling, which can result in over-reliance on low-level exceptions such as java.rmi.RemoteException and javax.naming.NamingException. In this installment of EJB Best Practices, Brett McLaughlin explains why a little attention goes a long way when it comes to exception handling, and shows you two simple techniques that will set you on the path to building more robust and useful exception handling frameworks."

ONJava.com: An Exception Handling Framework for J2EE Applications

ONJava.com: An Exception Handling Framework for J2EE Applications: "An Exception Handling Framework for J2EE Applications
by ShriKant Vashishtha
01/11/2006

In most Java projects, a large percentage of the code is boilerplate code. Exception handling comes under this category. Even though the business logic may be just three or four lines of code, exception handling might go on for ten to 20 lines. This article talks about how to keep exception handling simple and straightforward, keeping the developer's plate clean for him to concentrate on business logic rather than devoting time to writing exception-handling boilerplate code. It also gives the basis and guidelines to create and deal with exceptions in the J2EE environment and targets some of the business problems, in which exceptions could be used to resolve them. This article uses the Struts framework as the presentation implementation, though the approach is applicable to any presentation implementation."

Desktop Pipeline | The Ultimate PC For 2006

Desktop Pipeline | The Ultimate PC For 2006: "January 11, 2006

The Ultimate PC For 2006

Why buy a ho-hum off-the-rack computer when you can cherry-pick components to create a truly superior PC? Find out which products made the grade as we put together this year's screamer.

By Bill O'Brien Courtesy of Personal Tech Pipeline

Anyone can buy a computer. You go down to your local superstore or crawl the Internet, find the one you want, plunk down your cash, and there it is. But don't you really deserve something more than an off-the-rack PC? That's a rhetorical question. Of course you do. So why not build one yourself?"

Desktop Pipeline | Review: Monarch Gamer PC With Athlon 64 FX60 Dual-Core Processor

Desktop Pipeline | Review: Monarch Gamer PC With Athlon 64 FX60 Dual-Core Processor: "January 10, 2006

Review: Monarch Gamer PC With Athlon 64 FX60 Dual-Core Processor

Monarch Computer Systems’ Nemesis Custom Gaming PC packs a wallop with the brand-new dual-core Athlon 64 FX60.

By Bill O'Brien Desktop Pipeline

AMD's Athlon 64 FX60, released today, shouldn’t exist. Chips in the FX series are gaming chips and dual core does little for gaming, according to AMD. So why is there a dual core FX60? I took a look at Monarch Computer Systems’ new Nemesis Custom Gaming PC to find out."

Microsoft's Windows OneCare Live | | January 13, 2006 | Network Computing

Microsoft's Windows OneCare Live | | January 13, 2006 | Network Computing: "Microsoft's Windows OneCare Live


OneCare Live promises not only protection against a slew of nasties but also system optimization and backup.

Jan 13, 2006 | By Rick Broida

Originally Published on Desktop Pipeline

If you've been seeking a one-stop solution for PC health, security and backup, you've probably eyed Norton SystemWorks or a similar suite. Microsoft, for its part, has steered clear of the utilities market over the years, but that's about to change."

Forgive me but shouldn't this be part of the O.S. We pay through the nose for it, I would expect any new O.S. that costs a significant amount of money to throw in Utilities such as Virus protection, Backups, Recovery - including the ability to read data from corrupt discs on non-system drives, speedy defragmentation etc... as standard.

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Instant Rails 1.0

Instant Rails 1.0: "Instant Rails 1.0

Posted by curthibbs 6 days ago

I almost forgot to blog about this (I’m not used to blogging about my own stuff)...

I just released Instant Rails 1.0. Instant Rails is a one-stop Rails runtime solution containing Ruby, Rails, Apache, and MySQL, all preconfigured and ready to run. No installer, you simply drop it into the directory of your choice and run it. It does not modify your system environment. It even includes the Rails-based blogging software Typo preinstalled as a sample application (thanks to David Morton for doing this)."

Sunbelt BLOG: Anatomy of a malicious host file hijack

Sunbelt BLOG: Anatomy of a malicious host file hijack: "Anatomy of a malicious host file hijack

Just for kicks and giggles, Patrick Jordan took apart a host file hijack that resulted in an obscenely accurate spoof of a Bank of America site — and a large number of other financial institutions."

Heard about this scam about a year ago - at which time it was only used to spoof a few South American banks - seems to be growing.

Alexa Web Search Platform

Alexa Web Search Platform: "What is the Alexa Web Search Platform?

The Alexa Web Search Platform provides public access to the vast web crawl collected by Alexa Internet. Users can search and process billions of documents -- even create their own search engines -- using Alexa's search and publication tools. Alexa provides compute and storage resources that allow users to quickly process and store large amounts of web data. Users can view the results of their processes interactively, transfer the results to their home machine, or publish them as a new web service."

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

SimpleBits | Publications › CSS Tips

SimpleBits | Publications › CSS Tips: "Publications › CSS Tips
An ongoing collection of various CSS tips, experiments and techniques."

Mainly old stuff but worth a gander.

Access In-memory Objects Easily with JoSQL

Access In-memory Objects Easily with JoSQL: "Access In-memory Objects Easily with JoSQL
This innovative, new open source engine simplifies your code by allowing you to access your objects using SQL strings instead of coding your own filters. Even better, it has a very small learning curve.

by Laurence Moroney January 10, 2006"

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Musings of a Software Development Manager » Blog Archive » ScrumWorks is Free

Musings of a Software Development Manager » Blog Archive » ScrumWorks is Free: "ScrumWorks is Free

I spent some time evaluating tools like Rally, ScrumWorks, and XPlanner about 6 months ago. After investing some time with XPlanner and some configuration hell, I dropped it after a few weeks on a Sprint because the workflow was more of a headache then just using corkboards, index cards, and Excel."

FixMyXP.com - Your One Stop Windows XP Fix It Site - 99 Useful Run Commands

FixMyXP.com - Your One Stop Windows XP Fix It Site - 99 Useful Run Commands: "99 Useful Run Commands
Written by windowsxp550
Saturday, 29 October 2005"


This site is extremely useful - lots of things on here I didn't know about. This particular page has many shortcuts ... but plenty more articles with other info

Adobe Labs - Project: Lightroom

Adobe Labs - Project: Lightroom: "Adobe® Lightroom™ Beta is the efficient new way for professional photographers to import, select, develop, and showcase large volumes of digital images. So you can spend less time sorting and refining photographs, and more time actually shooting them. Its clean, elegant interface literally steps out of the way and lets you quickly view and work with the images you shot today, as well as the thousands of images that you will shoot over the course of your career. Because no two photographers work alike, Adobe Lightroom adapts to your workflow, not the other way around."

Related: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/labs/archives/2006/01/adobe_lightroom.cfm
http://www.apple.com/aperture/

Install Google Screensaver without Google Logo - Digital Inspiration Software Reviews, Technology News, Web Guides, Internet Downloads, Tutorials, Pro

Install Google Screensaver without Google Logo : "January 7, 2006
Install Google Screensaver without Google Logo
by Amit Agarwal @ 1/07/2006 09:57:00 PM

Guide to download and install the Google Pack Screensaver without downloading any of the other Google Pack components or the Google Updater software. The Google screensaver will be installed without the Google Logo."

Strip Out The Fans, Add 8 Gallons of Cooking Oil | Tom's Hardware

Strip Out The Fans, Add 8 Gallons of Cooking Oil | Tom's Hardware: "Strip Out The Fans, Add 8 Gallons of Cooking Oil

Frank Vƶlkel

9 Jan 2006 11:00

Dousing Your Athlon FX-55 With Eight Gallons Of Cooking Oil?

Common sense dictates that submerging your high-end PC in cooking oil is not a good idea. But, of course, engineering feats and science breakthroughs were made possible by those who dared to explore the realms of the non-conventional. Members of the Munich-based THG lab are only too happy to confirm this fact. And not only did we find that our AMD Athlon FX-55 and GeForce 6800 Ultra equipped system didn't short out when we filled the sealed shut PC case with cooking oil--but the non-conductive properties of the liquid coupled created a totally cool and quiet high-end PC, devoid of the noise pollution of fans. The PC case - or should we say tank - also offered a new and novel way to display and show off your PC components."


Makes me reminisce about the old watercooling hoax that did the rounds on the overclockers forum.

Gentleware ships Poseidon for UML 4.0

Gentleware ships Poseidon for UML 4.0: "Gentleware ships Poseidon for UML 4.0

Posted by: Webmaster on Saturday Jan 07, 2006

Gentleware AG has announced the 4.0 release of its modeling tool Poseidon for UML.

With the inclusion of UML 2 capabilities in this major release, Gentleware offers the ideal modeling tool for a wide range of users."

Monday, January 09, 2006

AnandTech: CES 2006 - Day 2: Blu-ray/HD-DVD, PureVideo H.264, Viiv, Centrino Duo and a lot more

AnandTech: CES 2006 - Day 2: Blu-ray/HD-DVD, PureVideo H.264, Viiv, Centrino Duo and a lot more: "Up Close and Personal with NVIDIA's Quad-SLI

Yesterday we reported on Dell's Inspiron XPS 600 Renegade system that will be shipping with the world's first NVIDIA Quad-SLI setup. Unfortunately the system we showed you pictures of did not actually have the Quad-SLI cards installed, but today at NVIDIA's booth we were able to not only take some pictures of the actual setup but get a better understanding of how it works.

NVIDIA's Quad-SLI works on any nForce4 SLI motherboard with two PCIe x16 slots, in the case of Dell's XPS 600 Renegade the chipset of choice is a nForce4 SLI x16 Intel Edition. There is no technical reason the setup shouldn't work on an AMD nForce4 SLI x16 motherboard."

AnandTech: CES 2006 - Day 2: Blu-ray/HD-DVD, PureVideo H.264, Viiv, Centrino Duo and a lot more

AnandTech: CES 2006 - Day 2: Blu-ray/HD-DVD, PureVideo H.264, Viiv, Centrino Duo and a lot more: "Motorola In-Ear Bluetooth Headset

Motorola showed off a very cool design for their latest Bluetooth headset. Aside from being extremely small, the H5MINIBLUE is unique because the microphone resides in your ear canal. It listens to your voice by sensing the vibrations of your speech through your jaw.

This may seem odd at first; however the benefit of this design is that the listener on the other end of the call will hear almost no background noise from the user’s environment. So if you’re in a crowded convention center trying to talk on the phone, you don’t have to worry about the person you’re calling having to hear all the other conversations going on around you as well. At the same time, you don't have to yell to be heard on the other end of the conversation."

AJAX Translator

AJAX Translator: "AjaxTrans

by: joel parish

Start typing any text you want to be translated into the green field. The words should be automatically translated into the language of your choice and appear in the bluish box."

Cool

Generics and Packages

Generics and Packages: "Computing Thoughts
Generics and Packages
by Bruce Eckel
November 10, 2005

Summary
There appear to be some strange side effects on packages when using generics."

Sometimes I wish I had taken the time to really understand generics, then I see comments in an article such as this and I'm glad I haven't. I'm confused!

Imation Flash Wristband Bends to Your Needs - Computing News - Designtechnica

Imation Flash Wristband Bends to Your Needs - Computing News - Designtechnica: "Imation Flash Wristband Bends to Your Needs

Monday, January 9th 2006 @ 10:22 AM PST

By Nino Marchetti
Staff Writer, Designtechnica News

Company's newest flash drive is made of a rubber molding shell which can be plugged into itself to form a wristband."

Saturday, January 07, 2006

Manage releases, Ant builds, CVS, and Subversion with Antmod

Manage releases, Ant builds, CVS, and Subversion with Antmod: "Manage releases, Ant builds, CVS, and Subversion with Antmod
Open source tool eases the build process in Java/JEE projects

Summary
Antmod is an extensible tool for retrieving, versioning, building, and deploying code from and to Subversion or CVS (Concurrent Versions System). This article shows you how Antmod increases your productivity in Java/Java Enterprise Edition projects, keeps Ant build files consistent across projects, modularizes your development process, and manages your CVS/Subversion repositories. (1,500 words; January 2, 2006)

By Klaas Waslander"

Tips 'N Tricks: Debug with anonymous inner classes

Tips 'N Tricks: Debug with anonymous inner classes: "Tips 'N Tricks: Debug with anonymous inner classes
Use anonymous inner classes for easy debugging

Summary
Anonymous inner classes are mostly used for event handling in Java. However they can also prove useful for debugging purposes. This article explains how anonymous inner classes can be used for easier debugging. (400 words; January 2, 2006)

By Norbert Ehreke"

New features added to Servlet 2.5

New features added to Servlet 2.5: "New features added to Servlet 2.5
Servlets updated with annotations, web.xml conveniences, and more

Summary
In this article, Jason Hunter reviews the changes included in the latest version of the Servlet specification. This maintenance release includes support for annotations, several web.xml conveniences, a handful of removed restrictions, and some edge case clarifications. (2,600 words; January 2, 2006)"

The departure of the hyper-enthusiasts

The departure of the hyper-enthusiasts: "Computing Thoughts
The departure of the hyper-enthusiasts
by Bruce Eckel
December 18, 2005

Summary
The Java hyper-enthusiasts have left the building, leaving a significant contingent of Java programmers behind, blinking in the bright lights without the constant drumbeat of boosterism."

FACE: Faruk's Animated CSS Enhancements - KuraFire Network

FACE: Faruk's Animated CSS Enhancements - KuraFire Network: "FACE: Faruk's Animated CSS Enhancements

« · By Faruk Ateş · Dec 15, 2005

FACE was developed to allow standards-compliant web developers to put more life and energy into their pages, without having to learn Javascript or Flash: all it takes is basic math skills and a good understanding of CSS. FACE is built entirely from JavaScript and the CSS that you provide to control the animation."

Language Workbenches: The Killer-App for Domain Specific Languages?

Language Workbenches: The Killer-App for Domain Specific Languages?: "Language Workbenches: The Killer-App for Domain Specific Languages?

Martin Fowler

Most new ideas in software developments are really new variations on old ideas. This article describes one of these, the growing idea of a class of tools that I call Language Workbenches - examples of which include Intentional Software, JetBrains's Meta Programming System, and Microsoft's Software Factories. These tools take an old style of development - which I call language oriented programming and use IDE tooling in a bid to make language oriented programming a viable approach. Although I'm not enough of a prognosticator to say whether they will succeed in their ambition, I do think that these tools are some of the most interesting things on the horizon of software development. Interesting enough to write this essay to try to explain, at least in outline, how they work and the main issues around their future usefulness.

Last significant update: 12 Jun 05"

ONJava.com: Using Dependency Injection in Java EE 5.0

ONJava.com: Using Dependency Injection in Java EE 5.0: "Using Dependency Injection in Java EE 5.0
by Debu Panda
01/04/2006

Dependency injection, or inversion of control (IOC), is today's latest development craze. IOC containers such as Spring have become popular because they simplify the complexities of enterprise Java that come mostly from Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI). In this article, I'll discuss how you can use dependency injection in the upcoming Java EE 5.0 specification for resources and services. I migrated the J2EE 1.4 Blueprint application Java Adventure Builder to use EJB 3.0, web services metadata, and dependency injection; I'll use this application to illustrate concepts in this article."

No Magic upgrades MagicDraw UML to 10.5

No Magic upgrades MagicDraw UML to 10.5: " No Magic upgrades MagicDraw UML to 10.5

Posted by: Webmaster on Friday Jan 06, 2006 Viewed: 42 times

No Magic, Inc. has announced the release of MagicDraw UML 10.5, an upgrade of its award-winning UML-based architecture tool."

The Loop: The Coolest Remote Ever?

The Loop: The Coolest Remote Ever?: "Hillcrest Labs is a company developing technology to enable easy-to-use interfaces for consumer electronics devices. Dubbed 'Spontaneous Navigation,' the Java-based technology uses a MEMS-based (micro electro-mechanical sensor), donut-shaped controller, the interface is one of the easiest to navigate we've seen."

Live From CES: Quantum Disk From Atom Chip Corp. - Yahoo! News

Live From CES: Quantum Disk From Atom Chip Corp. - Yahoo! News: "Live From CES: Quantum Disk From Atom Chip Corp.

Fri Jan 6, 4:05 PM ET

There has been much ado about the Atom Chip and their claims of quantum computing power. We found their booth at CES buried in the depths of hell. The product is very real and on display as a working model. Forget transfer speeds in megabytes, because when working with the Quantum Disk, it's FAST with 4GB a second transfer rates."


Everyone seems skeptical about this (Originally announced in September).

Dell's 4.26-GHz Monster - Yahoo! News

Dell's 4.26-GHz Monster - Yahoo! News: "Dell's 4.26-GHz Monster

Fri Jan 6, 2:18 PM ET


This is a warranted and overclocked 4.25-GHz uber-ninjatastic-wonder-PC from Dell that can impregnate your sister from across the room. I mean look at this: it's a Intel's Pentium Extreme Edition 955 chipset with a HUGE heatsink and—this is the best part—four graphics cards.

As if the extremely overclocked CPU wasn't enough to begin with, NVIDIA stepped in and outfitted the system with two dual-GPU GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB cards, for a total of four GPUs running in SLI mode with 2GB of total on-board memory.

Lordy. Add in some 10,000 RPM drives and a shiny, custom skin and you've got a machine to make doves cry. No pricing, so start saving up your blood bank money."

Oh my life.... this is gonna cost.

Google Launches Video Download Service - Yahoo! News

Google Launches Video Download Service - Yahoo! News: "Google Launches Video Download Service

Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service Fri Jan 6, 11:00 PM ET

LAS VEGAS-- As expected, Google today launched a new video download service during a keynote here by co-founder and President Larry Page at the International Consumer Electronics Show."

Google Introduces Software Starter Kit - Yahoo! News

Google Introduces Software Starter Kit - Yahoo! News: "Google Introduces Software Starter Kit

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business Writer Fri Jan 6, 7:01 PM ET

SAN FRANCISCO - Google Inc. is distributing a free software startup kit designed to make computing safer and easier — a generous gesture driven by the company's desire to steer technology offline as well as online.

The software bundle, unveiled Friday in Las Vegas during a speech by Google co-founder Larry Page, represents the Internet search engine leader's latest jab at industry kingpin Microsoft Corp."

Visual Tour: Windows Vista Begins To Get Real | | January 5, 2006 | Network Computing

Visual Tour: Windows Vista Begins To Get Real | | January 5, 2006 | Network Computing: "Visual Tour: Windows Vista Begins To Get Real


The December pre-beta 2 release of Windows Vista offers the first true glimpse of the OS but is missing key elements.

Jan 5, 2006 | By Scot Finnie

Microsoft delivered the December CTP (Community Technology Preview) beta -- Build 5270 of Windows Vista -- on December 19, 2005. The company held a brief press conference with little fanfare. The list of new features it presented is, overall, not impressive. But when you sit down and use this build, what becomes immediately clear is that literally hundreds of little things about this version of Vista are much closer to final than in any previous build. And for the first time in about year, Microsoft is describing the OS's look and feel by the codename Aero — a sign that the user-interface work is gelling. The personality of this product is beginning to emerge."

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Head First HTML+CSS- ADTmag.com

Head First HTML+CSS- ADTmag.com: "Head First HTML+CSS
12/13/2005

By Matt Stephens

Head First HTML with CSS+XHTML

The Head First crew has just released their latest in the phenomenally successful HF series, Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML."

Yay - yet another book in the excellent Head First Series

AnandTech News: D-Link and Skype Enable Internet Calls Using Traditional Phones

AnandTech News: D-Link and Skype Enable Internet Calls Using Traditional Phones: "D-Link and Skype are joining forces in Internet calling. The two companies have announced their cooperative effort in developing the DPH-50U USB adapter which allows consumers to plug any regular home phone into your computer to make free VoIP phone calls using Skype. Here are just a few of the features you can expect from the adapter:"

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Ajaxian

Ajaxian: "Tuesday, January 3rd, 2006
AjaxTrans and Ads

We recently posted about AjaxTrans which has been updated with another proof of concept.

This time Joel Parish has added an example of calling out to ads as you type!

This is exactly why the critics who cried “Ajax will kill Ads because there will be less page loads” were so wrong. We just need to think of the game differently to just full page loads. Ajax will enable even BETTER contextual ads that change as you show interest in different ways (such as typing something as shown in this example)."

Monday, January 02, 2006

Hacking Windows XP: Hacking Windows Explorer

Hacking Windows XP: Hacking Windows Explorer: "This is Chapter 5 from the ExtremeTech book Hacking Windows XP, published by Wiley. You can also read other excerpts from the book about speeding disk access, speeding up your network and internet access, and speeding up your system boot.

The Windows Explorer is one of the most used parts of Windows XP. Every time you go to My Computer and browse through files on your computer, you are using Explorer. Using the icons on the desktop, right-clicking on files and folders, copying and pasting files are all examples of using the features that the Explorer provides."

Running Linux and Windows on the PSP

Running Linux and Windows on the PSP: "This feature appears in the upcoming ExtremeTech book 'Hacking the PSP.' Here we'll learn how to emulate a PC on the PSP, install Linux, and run Windows on the PSP.

So the PSP can do games, movies, video, music, photos, and Internet. Well, that's not enough—it should be able to run software we enjoy on our home PCs! Utilizing an open source x86 emulator called Bochs, which emulates the hardware usually found in PCs, and creating a few hard disk images with the software we want on them, you can run Linux and even Windows on your PSP!"
: "Universal Subscription Mechanism is a really simple way of allowing RSS readers to subscribe to RSS feeds. Many blogs and Websites with RSS feeds present an orange XML or RSS button, Atom button or text anchor link that points to the RSS feed. When the user clicks on the button, nothing substantial happens. This mechanism replaces that click with a subscription notification to the users default RSS handler."