September 28th, 2008
JQuery is, in my opinion, the most unique JavaScript libraries in terms of being able to modify content on-the-fly. One such incredibly useful example that I’m able to apply often, is adding PDF icons and _newwindow targets to all URLs with .PDF as an extension on all pages in a site without ever touching the source of the pages themselves, but rather just on one common include page.
Well, this library just got a major injection of Redmond steroids by the announcement, by way of Dion Almaer of Google, that Microsoft will be adding it to its standard development platform. Scott Guthrie has a quick demo of IntelliSense integration with JQuery in the ASP.NET toolset.
It’s neat to see technologies such as Hibernate, ORM, and Linq or actual implementations, such a JQuery in this case, span the borders to what I consider the three development realms – Open Source, Java and Microsoft.
Tags: Ajax, Java, OpenSource
Posted in Programming | Comments Off
September 22nd, 2008
An article I picked up about “being too nice” from Tim Berglund that was published on CIO.com hits a very sensitive spot. It indicates that being too nice, when it means compromising your position and ideas, is a career risk. When you step back and think about it, that makes perfect sense. I have taken a cautious few steps towards the solidarity-of-position, even when it poses small endangerments of conflict. I am already starting to see some of the benefits. But this is truly a fine line to walk. Don’t take it too far.
Tags: Business
Posted in Programming | Comments Off
September 20th, 2008
I’m hearing a huge buzz across the blogsphere about the maintenance changes to the Spring Framework. It appears at first interpretation that only the first three bug fix drops will be community available, and the others will be available only to paying enterprise customers.
Perhaps more concerning and going hand in hand with this is that largely only internal Spring employees are working on the codebase fixing bugs. If the community were allowed to be more involved, perhaps this strange commercialization positioning would not be necessary. Lastly, the venerable Matt Raible can’t even get access to the Spring 3.0 source code. If it is an open source product, where’s the source?
Please offer your comments and feedback. I’m interested to hear even more opinions on this change.
Update 2008-09-23 3:30 PM: More buzz on this at DZone.com from some respected names.
Update 2008-09-23 8:30 PM: And yet another update from the SpringSource team directly in the form of an FAQ.
Tags: Java
Posted in Programming | Comments Off
September 8th, 2008
There is a relatively new tool out from Sun call the VisualVM. It is, in short a super new version of JConsole. In fact, it even runs all the extensions you have previously written for JConsole. Nice job Sun! You can profile, take snapshots, and watch in real time, threads, memory usage, and so much more of any local or remote java application.
Now, it takes a little bit of a trick to get it to work on Mac OSX. You need the latest Java 6 JDK installed, though it can monitor apps running on JRE 1.4 through JRE 7.0. But if you don’t set it as your default JDK, which can cause many apps such as Eclipse and CyberDuck to stop working, then you’ll need to use the –jdkhome option when launching visualvm. I set up a shell script to do so. The full invocation is as follows:
visualvm --jdkhome /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.6.0/Home/
There is even a getting started guide that shows you the basic features. And if video is more your style, there’s a vodcast that shows off this new app as well. If you still can’t get enough of this new tool, there’s a neat DZone overview written by Geertjan Wielenga.
Tags: Java, MacOS
Posted in Programming | Comments Off
September 3rd, 2008
Never really thought about this approach before, but if your DNS * record for your domain maps to your web server, you can use just a servlet filter or whatever other technology you want to use to capture custom tertiary level subdomains URLs and redirect to a user-specific page.
For example, if you want http://matthew.ambientideas.com to take your users to a user-profile page, there’s no need to wire in your DNS to your software app, constantly updating it per user. You just capture the URL, parse out the tertiary domain part, and redirect, say, to http://ambientideas.com/users/?user=matthew. Easy, straightforward and cool. Kudos to Jordan for the first implementation for an upcoming app from Ambient Ideas.
Tags: Productivity, WebBrowser
Posted in Programming | Comments Off
September 1st, 2008
If you like Quicksilver for your Mac, then you should check out Ubiquity for Firefox. Same concept, with the power extended to the browser. Video review available.
Tags: Productivity, WebBrowser
Posted in Programming | Comments Off
September 1st, 2008
Got this link from my Twitter network, and haven’t laughed this hard in weeks. If the crew of Monty Python all got together and decided to do a show about the programming language Erlang, this is what it would look like. 80′s haircuts (70′s?), DTS telephone systems, and prolific use of Sun Workstations with X Windows in 16 colors (or is it monochrome?). Erlang has a bit more modern web site now, but the video image will forever be emblazoned in my mind.
Posted in Programming | Comments Off