News aggregator

Ubuntu Is A Poor Standard Bearer For Linux

Webservices.xml.com - Sun, 2010-04-11 00:10
To whatever part of the general non-geek public is even aware of Linux the names "Linux" and "Ubuntu" are all but interchangeable. Over the past few years I've come to the conclusion that this state of affairs is, at best, unfortunate.
Categories: Webservices.xml.com

Developing Android Applications with Java, Part 2

O'Reilly Network - Fri, 2010-04-09 08:36

Learn to build mobile applications for the exciting new Android platform. When you purchase this product, you'll get access to the videos, slide presentations, and code examples associated with the online course, Developing Android Applications with Java, Part 2. As you learn, you will build a Twitter app from start to finish.

You can never have too many Twitter clients, as the market has already proven. We'll use a very comprehensive and useful library called twitter4j to do the heavy lifting for us, but there will be plenty of lifting left to do. We'll walk you through setting up sign ins, creating a public timeline, making sure your app is responsive and giving it style to stand out from the flock. Finally, for those times when 140 characters isn't enough, you'll extend your Twitter client to also post photos to the popular Twitpic image service.

Categories: Java, O'Reilly Network

(In Relation To - Site - Tag 'Seam News') Seam 3 Design Meetings

Seamframework - Fri, 2010-04-09 07:33

Following on from the success of the RichFaces Design Meetings held weekly on IRC, we're going to do the same for Seam 3. We'll be holding a regular 45 minute meeting every Thursday at 13:45 in #seam-dev on irc.freenode.net. At this meeting we will cover a mix of technical architecture and project planning - if you are interested in working on a Seam module, or just want to know more about the progress of Seam 3, this is a good opportunity to drop by!

I'm also back recently from an extended holiday to Nepal, which is a good enough excuse for me to include a photo of the high point of the trip (and at 5500m of my life!).

Pete Muir 2010-04-09T07:33:48Z

Categories: Java, Seamframework

Florida DrupalCamp 2010 Case Study

drupal.org - Wed, 2010-04-07 13:45
Two Days, 176 attendees, Two Grateful Organizations with New Sites

Florida DrupalCamp 2010 held just outside of Orlando was the largest Drupal-related gathering the Sunshine state has ever seen. The February 20-21 event pulled in more than 175 attendees from Florida and the US, more than $5,000 in sponsorships, and generated a lot of interest in regional community building throughout Florida. Anecdotal input and a formal survey indicate the weekend was an unqualified success. In the spirit of open-source, this case study provides other DrupalCamp organizers insight into planning and organizing a worthwhile DrupalCamp, from early planning through follow-up participant surveys.

Overview

FDC10 was the culmination of a strong effort by the Florida Drupal User's Group, local companies, and generous sponsors. It was unique in many ways, including the number and diversity of the participants as well as how the event was organized. The weekend was less of a "barcamp" style event and more of a mini-DrupalCon, with almost all sessions pre-determined, and several generous sponsorships covering plenty of food and swag for all attendees who paid a minimal registration fee of $5.

The weekend featured a full day of sessions divided into three tracks based on experience level, including one dedicated to beginners to introduce users to the Drupal platform and sow the seeds for growing the community. The second day was Coding for A Cause, a coding sprint among 40 volunteer developers of all skill levels that built operational sites for two deserving, PR-savvy, Florida not-for profit organizations.

read more

Categories: drupal, drupal.org, Php

My iPad Review

Raible Design - Wed, 2010-04-07 04:51
One week before my home computer was stolen from my living room, the iPad was announced. After watching the initial video, I figured I might want to get one. Fast forward to iPad release day. I was skiing with a friend in Winter Park as I was scratching my head trying to come up with good Easter presents for my kids. Then it hit me: An iPad would be an excellent Easter gift for my kids.

I called the Cherry Creek Apple store and asked if they had any left. They said they did, but they'd likely be sold out before the end of the day. I arrived back in Denver around 3 and was 2nd in line at the Apple Store at 3:30. 5 minutes later, I walked out with an iPad. They were sold out of 32GB models, so I went with the 64GB.

CNET has a good about the 5 Reasons NOT to get an iPad. There #1 reason is great: because you don't need one. They're absolutely right, I didn't need an iPad. I wanted a new home computer so I don't have to pack my MacBook Pro back and forth to the office. However, I realized that most of the time I'm at home, I'm not doing much hard-core computing. Most of the time, I'm checking e-mail, reading Twitter or reading articles. So I bought it because it was cheaper than a new home computer, but I also realize it's not a computer replacement.

It's really just a big iPhone.

In every aspect, it's a larger iPhone. Abbie's first words when she opened it on Easter Sunday were "It's a big phone!" It is a big iPhone, but it's much more pleasant for reading articles and e-mail. Beyond that, it seems good for games, but it's certainly not super-duper fantastico. It's a bit heavy; too heavy to read as you would a book. After holding it for an hour or two last night, my left hand started to get sore. Also, its keyboard sucks. Maybe I'll get used to it in the long run, but without the tactile feedback of keys, it can be difficult to type without looking. The other things I don't like about it are:

  • There are very few good apps (iPhone apps work, but they're small).
  • The screen gets dirty quickly and it looks kinda gross when it's not lit up.
  • The Photos app doesn't work at all for me. It says "Updating Library" when I open it, then crashes several seconds later. Maybe I have too many pictures (12.5K items, 28.5 GB).
  • When it's synching with my laptop, it constantly connects and reconnects and makes a loud noise each time.

I took the iPad to work on Monday and received some interesting feedback from co-workers.

There are some good things about it. First of all, it's wicked fast. Apps *pop* and load their data very quickly. Way faster than my iPhone and faster than both my MacBook Pro and the powerhouse Mac Pro I use at work.

I really like the newspaper apps for reading the latest news articles. I'm not much of a news person, but there's a good chance I read more of it because the apps are so pleasing to the eye. Also, the Netflix app sucked me in as soon as I started reading about it. I've bought my kids several movies on iTunes, but there's still not a huge selection to choose from. With Netflix and its live streaming, we have seemingly thousands of movies to choose from and they're all a touch away. The Mail app is also pleasant to use, possibly moreso than Mail.app on OS X and Gmail in any ol' browser.

There's a good bit of me that's underwhelmed with the device, but I think it has a lot of potential when more apps start appearing. It also seems to need some accessories right away: namely a case to carry it in and a shield to keep clean. I could also see getting a stand for it to enhance its digital picture frame feature. If I could plug it into my HD TV, it might even eliminate my need for OnDemand Movies and DVDs.

I think the biggest potential for the iPad is kids, baby boomers and couples. There's a good chance all of these demographics have a real computer in their home, but the head of household doesn't want to spring for two. Take my mom for instance, she wants an iPad for e-mail because my dad always hogs their iMac. My kids aren't that enthralled with it, but it took them awhile to appreciate the Wii and iPhone. With the Wii, it was the Super Mario Bros. game that reeled them in. Same story with my iPhone; they love the games.

My guess is the real attraction of the iPad will be the apps that are built for it. I can't wait to see what developers come up with.

Categories: Java, Raible Design

Episode 159: C++0X with Scott Meyers

Software Engineering Radio - Mon, 2010-04-05 20:20
Podcast (MP3): Download

Hosts: Markus 

Guests:

Scott Meyers

 

Recording venue:

Skype

This episode is a conversation with Scott Meyers about the upcoming C++0x standard. We talk a bit about the reasons for creating this new standard and then cover the most important new features, including upport for concurrency, implicitly-typed variables, move semantics, variadic templates, lambda functions, and uniform initialization syntax. We also looked at some new features in the standard library.

Links
Categories: Software Engineering Radio

BookTeller: Subscription-based Library of Animated Children's Books

drupal.org - Mon, 2010-04-05 14:33

BookTeller.com is a subscription-based online library for animated and narrated children's books, available in both English and Chinese. Currently, there are over 200 books available for subscribers and more are being added. Its goals are to help parents and educators teach children how to read and to get them reading more often by giving them books that are both engaging and fun.

Besides being an online library, it is also a platform for authors and publishers who wish to transform their work into animated books and to monetize them. For that, we have a revenue sharing program and a team of award-winning animators to help out with the animation.

The consumer-facing website is used for, among other things, showcasing what books are in the library and to handle registrations/payments. The books are accessed via a client reader based on Adobe's AIR platform, which must be downloaded and installed.

The following is our experience in building out the website using Drupal. I hope it is useful as another example of what's possible.

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Categories: drupal, drupal.org, Php

Java Posse #301 - Newscast for April 2nd 2010

Java Posse - Fri, 2010-04-02 16:52
Newscast for April 2nd 2010 Fully formatted shownotes can always be found at http://javaposse.com Last chance - Javazone call for papers extended 1 week. http://jz10.java.no/program.html Quick News
  • Primefaces, available for both JSF 1.0 and 2.0, has just been released open source under the Apache v2 license.
ScalaWags Groovy, Baby! Listener Feedback Thanks


The Java Posse consists of Tor Norbye, Carl Quinn, Joe Nuxoll and Dick Wall

Categories: Java, Java Posse

New Drupal Book - Drupal E-commerce with Ubercart 2.x

drupal.org - Wed, 2010-03-31 20:18

Drupal E-commerce with Ubercart 2.x, by George Papadongonas and Yiannis Doxaras, is a new title from Packt Publishing. It is aimed at business owners and ordinary Drupal users without development expertise who want to create, administer and design their own online shop. This is the first title that deals with Ubercart 2.x, providing non-technical users with information about how to sell shippable goods, downloadable products, recurring memberships, and event tickets, as well as enable other complex interactions using various contributed Drupal modules. As a reader of drupal.org, you can receive a 15% or 20% discount (see below) and benefit the Drupal Association!

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Categories: drupal, drupal.org, Php

2010 Google Summer of Code project applications now open!

drupal.org - Tue, 2010-03-30 20:05

2010 is here and its time for another Summer of Code, courtesy of Google! For those who don't know, Summer of Code is an amazing program in which student developers are paid a stipend by Google in exchange for working on open source projects along with mentors from those projects. Drupal has benefited enormously from Summer of Code over the years. Many of our most productive and well-known members are former Summer of Code students, including Drupal 7 core maintainer Angela Byron (webchick), Drupal 6 core maintainer Gábor Hojtsy and many many more. For more information see the Summer of Code FAQ.

2010 marks Drupal's sixth year being accepted as a mentoring organization. Last year we successfully completed 21 student projects and it would be great to match or even surpass that this year, but there are two things we need to make that happen - Students and Mentors!

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Categories: drupal, drupal.org, Php

(mojavelinux.com - Seam News) A concise and eloquent look at Seam

Seamframework - Tue, 2010-03-30 06:05

Despite all that I have written, explained and presented about Seam, I often find myself struggling to sum it up in a few short breaths. Fortunately, Matt Campbell does an superb job of defining the essence of what Seam provides eloquently and concisely in his blog series An Honest Look at Seam. (And I'm not just saying that because he credits Seam in Action as being his guide in his exploration of Seam).

In part 1, Matt explains how the attention to scoping of components is what sets Seam apart from Spring and makes it more suited for the web environment. In my talks on Java EE 6, I often say that JSR-299 (CDI) considers the scope of a bean (where it's stored) to be just as important as the component instance itself. Speaking of Java EE 6, Matt does some comparisons of his own between Seam and CDI.

Having established the importance of context, Matt opens part 2 introducing the conversation scope. He quickly delves into the symbiotic relationship between this scope, the persistence context and the multi-request use case (which is just about any use case on the web). He raises the ever important issue of manual flush mode in Hibernate and how it enables use of an optimistic transaction.

Matt takes a break from the theory in part 3 to address the developer's first experience with Seam. He calms the anxiety a typical newcomer might have the first time the developer observes seam-gen churn out application. While some may appreciate the huge boast that a fully-functional application provides, the shear number of artifacts is daunting for those expecting "Hello World". But as Matt clarifies,

There is a lot to Seam, but not becuase Seam itself is vastly huge and complex, but because Seam integrates so many things together.

So take your time and explore it all. Use what parts you need and skip the parts you don't.

In the future, rather than struggling to find the words to describe Seam on a trip in an elevator, I'm just going to hand the interested listener a card with the URL to these blogs on it ;)

It's important to zero in on what Seam 2 provides, especially as we look ahead to Java EE 6 and the development of the Seam 3 portable extension library. So regardless of where you are in your adoption of Seam 2 or Java EE 6, take a moment to read through these entries.

Dan Allen 2010-03-30T06:05:48Z
Categories: Java, Seamframework

DrupalCon SF 2010: Drupal core developer summit

drupal.org - Mon, 2010-03-29 15:42

On Saturday, April 17th, the weekend before DrupalCon San Francisco, I'm helping to organize the very first Drupal core developer summit. The goal of the Drupal core developer summit is to talk about ways we can improve Drupal core, and the core development processes, all while having a good time socializing with fellow core developers. Meeting in person for a full day and having more focused time to brainstorm about just core, should be really valuable. We can come up with plans to get Drupal 7 released, and we can get initial alignment on Drupal 8.

To make it lively and fun, we'll do a series of 10 minute lightning talks. In addition to the lightning talks, we'll have a number of meatier discussions and breakout sessions in smaller groups. The lightning talks will take the format: "How to make X more awesome?" where X can be anything in Drupal core. The idea behind the lightning talks is to educate core contributors about problems that need to be fixed, to present foundations for solutions, and to bootstrap collaboration. The original plan was to have 16 lightning talks, but based on feedback, I'm now leaning towards more breakout sessions and fewer lightning talks. On Sunday, the day after the Drupal core developer summit, there will be a code lounge where longer breakout sessions can be held too. Suggestions welcome as we can still made adjustments. Read on to learn more about how to attend.

read more

Categories: drupal, drupal.org, Php

The Trifecta: 3 Resorts in 3 Days

Raible Design - Mon, 2010-03-29 14:11
Last Tuesday night, I worked late in hopes of having a Powder Day on Wednesday. I went to bed at 2 a.m., woke up at 6 a.m. and found that there was only 5" of fresh powder at Winter Park. My ski rule is there has to be 9" of powder in order to justify playing hookie. Working these extra hours on Tuesday -- coupled with a late night on Wednesday -- and I hit my 40-hour-max on Thursday. Naturally, I took Friday off and headed for the hills. Below is how I started my Friday morning.

After several high-speed groomed runs, I hit Mary Jane's bumps a few times (completing Outhouse and Trestle w/o stopping) and watched the Whiteout begin around 11.

Around noon, I began searching for a location to watch DU in the NCAA Hockey Playoffs. Unable to find a bar with ESPN U, I skied until 2 and then headed to my friend's mountain home. He had the game recorded, so I got to watch it and endure its unfortunate outcome. DU played really well, but couldn't beat RIT.

On Saturday, the snow report said 6" at Steamboat and 6.5" at Winter Park. Since we hadn't been to Steamboat in a while, my friend (a.k.a. The Professor) and I decided to drive there for the day. It was an excellent decision because there was easily a foot of fresh powder in the chutes and trees. We skied from 9:30 to 4:00; easily my most difficult day of skiing this year.

On Sunday, I woke up and read the ski report: Copper had 3" of new snow. That's when it hit me that I could pull of The Trifecta. I don't know that I've ever done 3 resorts in 3 days before, but I'm happy to report I've done it now. Sunday was a beautiful day of Spring Skiing and Copper did not disappoint. They'd received 7" inches in 48 hours, making Sunday an awesome day for trees and double blacks. There was plenty of powder, great friends and lots of smiles from everyone. You can see from the pictures below what a beautiful Blue Bird Day it was.

With only 3 weeks left in ski season, I'm happy to report I have 22 days in. With any luck, I'll hit 25 days and set a personal record.

Categories: Java, Raible Design

Do Car Safety Problems Come From Outer Space?

Slashdot.org - Sun, 2010-03-28 21:58
Hugh Pickens writes "As electronic devices are made to perform more and more functions on smaller circuit chips, the systems become more sensitive and vulnerable to corruption from single event upsets and this is especially true of Toyota who has led the auto industry in its widespread inclusion of electronic controls in the manufacture of their various car models. 'These circuit families store not just data, but their basic function electrically,' says Lloyd W. Massengill, director of engineering at the Vanderbilt Institute for Space and Defense Electronics at Vanderbilt University. 'In the unfortunate event of a particle flipping just the right bit, a circuit configured to carry out a benign action may be reprogrammed to carry out some unintended action.' Denise Chow writes in Live Science that some scientists are pointing to cosmic ray radiation as a plausible mechanism behind the sudden, unexplained acceleration reported to have occurred with the late model Toyotas."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Categories: Slashdot.org

Best Way To Land Entry-Level Job?

Slashdot.org - Sun, 2010-03-28 20:55
chemicaldave writes "I'm graduating this May and have been seeking a programming position for months. It seems that the biggest hurdle to landing an interview is getting past the doorman that is HR. After reading this entry from Coding Horror describing the lack of programming candidates who can actually program, I can't help but scratch my head. I can program! (See how I put that link in?) If I can't land an interview, then even a short online evaluation of my coding skills would suffice. I just want a chance to prove myself. Alas, sending resumes to companies has rarely led to anything but an auto-confirmation email of my submission. I understand that sending resumes online is not the best method to landing an interview, but I come from a small rural school so job fairs rarely offer anything more than IT support positions let alone a programming position. It seems to me that developers are always looking for talented young programmers. We're out here looking for you too. Am I missing something?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Categories: Slashdot.org

BBC Activates DRM For Its iPlayer Content

Slashdot.org - Sun, 2010-03-28 19:47
oik writes "The BBC has quietly added DRM to its iPlayer content. This breaks support for things like the XBMC plugin as well as other non-approved third-party players. The get-iplayer download page has a good summary of what happened, including links to The Reg articles and the BBC's response to users' complaints."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Categories: Slashdot.org

The Technology Behind Formula 1 Racing

Slashdot.org - Sun, 2010-03-28 18:43
swandives writes "The Australian Grand Prix F1 event is being held in Melbourne this weekend (27-28 March) and Computerworld Australia has interviewed the technology teams for BMW Sauber, McLaren Racing, Red Bull Racing, and Renault about how they run their IT systems and how technology has changed the sport. Each car has about 100 sensors which capture data and send anywhere up to 20GB back to the pits during a race. The tech guys arrive a week before a race to set everything up — the kit for BMW Sauber weighs close to 3200 kilograms — and when it's all over, they pack it all up and move on to the next event. Good pics too."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Categories: Slashdot.org

The Economics of Perfect Software

Slashdot.org - Sun, 2010-03-28 17:40
An anonymous reader writes "This article takes the interesting perspective that leaving bugs in software is good — little ones, at least. This quote is particularly insightful: 'How do you know whether a bug is big or little? Think about who's going to hit it, and how mad they'll be when they do. If a user who goes through three levels of menus, opens an advanced configuration window, checks three checkboxes, and hits the 'A' key gets a weird error message for his trouble, that's a little bug. It's buried deep, and when the user hits it, he says 'huh,' clicks a button, and then goes on his merry way. If your program crashes on launch for a common setup, though, that's a big bug. Lots of people will hit it, and they will all be pissed. ... The cost of fixing all the bugs in your program and then being sure you fixed them all is way too high compared to the cost of having a few users hit some bugs they won't care about."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Categories: Slashdot.org

Rapidshare Trying To Convert Pirates Into Customers

Slashdot.org - Sun, 2010-03-28 16:36
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from TorrentFreak: "The file-hosting service Rapidshare is seeking major entertainment industry partners for an online store [to which links containing infringing material will redirect]. The plan is an attempt to bridge the gap between copyright holders and users of the site who distribute infringing material. Similar to many other companies that operate in the file-sharing business, Rapidshare often finds itself caught between two fires. On the one hand it wants to optimize the user experience, but by doing so they have to respect the rights holders to avoid being continuously dragged to court. To ease the minds of some major executives in the entertainment industry, Rapidshare's General Manager Bobby Chang has revealed an ambitious plan through which copyright holders could benefit from the file-hosting service. At the same time, Chang says that his company will target uploaders of copyrighted material — whom he refers to as criminals — more aggressively."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Categories: Slashdot.org

Why Some Devs Can't Wait For NoSQL To Die

Slashdot.org - Sun, 2010-03-28 15:29
theodp writes "Ted Dziuba can't wait for NoSQL to die. Developing your app for Google-sized scale, says Dziuba, is a waste of your time. Not to mention there is no way you will get it right. The sooner your company admits this, the sooner you can get down to some real work. If real businesses like Walmart can track all of their data in SQL databases that scale just fine, Dziuba argues, surely your company can, too."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Categories: Slashdot.org