Links for December 30th through January 4th

  • Why Your Next Cloud App Will Probably Suck Without….Unit Testing – Put simply, developers use unit tests as an internal control on the functionality and compatibility of their applications when changes to features, code or the environment happen.
  • Hacking Knowledge: How to Learn Faster, Deeper, and Better in the 21st Century | OEDb – We've collected some amazing tips and tricks (an update of our earlier article, almost seven years old now) you can use to help you get the most out of the time you spend learning. From study suggestions to brain hacks, these tips are sure to help you learn faster, deeper, and better, no matter the subject.
  • America’s Real Criminal Element: Lead – Cleaning up the rest of the lead that remains in our environment could turn out to be the cheapest, most effective crime prevention tool we have. And we could start doing it tomorrow.
  • Advanced NFL Stats: Play-by-Play Data – I've recently completed a project to compile publicly-available NFL play-by-play data. It took a while, but now it's ready.
  • Introduction to Spring Data Neo4j | Architects Zone – Here's a 1-hour practical guide to getting started with Spring Data on Neo4j. This will cover Spring Data Neo4j's features/benefits, use cases, and a step by step demo.
  • The future according to Google’s Larry Page – Fortune Tech – Google CEO Larry Page envisions a future in which computers plan your vacations, drive your cars, and anticipate your whims. Audacious? Maybe. But Page's dreams have a way of coming true.
  • Seven Deadly Sins of Modern Objective-C – We're all guilty of some Objective-C sins, I'm sure, but the important thing is to improve. We're at the dawn of a new year. Why not take this opportunity to reflect on why you've been so sinful and find ways to code more virtuously in the new year?
  • Introducing Spring Scala – The goal of the Spring Scala project is simply to make it easier to use the Spring framework in Scala. We believe that there are many Spring users out there who want to try Scala out, but do not want to leave their experience with Spring behind. This project is meant for those people.
  • Sublime Package Control – a Sublime Text 2 Package Manager by wbond – A full-featured package manager that helps discovering, installing, updating and removing packages for Sublime Text 2. It features an automatic upgrader and supports GitHub, BitBucket and a full channel/repository system.
  • Eve is a multipurpose, web based agent platform that uses existing protocols for communication (HTTP, XMPP, JSON-RPC) – Eve is a multipurpose, web based agent platform. The project aims to develop an open protocol for communication between software agents. Eve is designed as a decentral, scalable system for autonomously acting agents. Eve uses the existing world wide web as platform, and uses existing protocols for communication (HTTP, XMPP, JSON-RPC).
  • twig-persist – Object Datastore for Google App Engine – Twig is an object persistence interface built on Google App Engine's low-level datastore which overcomes many of JDO-GAEs limitations including improved support for inheritance, polymorphism and generic types. You can easily configure, modify or extend Twigs behaviour by implementing your own strategies or overriding extension points in pure Java code.
  • OWNER – Java properties files made super simple! – The goal of OWNER API is to minimize the code required to handle application configuration through Java properties files. The inspiring idea for this API comes from GWT i18n
  • Java.next() -> Scala or Groovy? – Generally the understanding is that scala has the ability to disrupt the status quo rather than incrementally improving it like Groovy. Scala has done and doing good job of reducing the cost of abstraction transliterate Java into Scala and end up with bytecode that is almost exactly the same. Scala has some original good ideas and well thought out type system.
  • Windows 8 proving less popular than Vista | KitGuru – Data from Net Applications shows that Windows 8 is less popular than Windows Vista, the operating system that proved unpopular with the enthusiast audience.
  • Antivirus Makers Work on Software to Catch Malware More Effectively – NYTimes.com – Consumers and businesses spend billions of dollars every year on antivirus software. But these programs rarely, if ever, block freshly minted computer viruses, experts say, because the virus creators move too quickly. That is prompting start-ups and other companies to get creative about new approaches to computer security.
  • HtmlUnit vs JSoup: html parsing in Java – In this blog I will compare JSoup with other similar framework, HtmlUnit. Apparently both of them are good Html parsing frameworks and both can be used for web application unit testing and web scraping. In this blog, I will explain how HtmlUnit is better suited for web application unit testing automation and JSoup is better suited for Web Scraping.
  • Progress of Happiness – The first is that sucking at something is the first step of getting better at it. And that trying really hard isn’t supposed to be easy. In fact, getting better at anything isn’t supposed to be easy. You are bound to get fail, get hurt, fail again before you succeed.
  • Microsoft WebMatrix – Open Source Web Applications Made Easier – Open source web apps make it easy to get started developing websites, but they can sometimes be time-consuming to get configured on your computer. WebMatrix makes it simple and straightforward.
  • Safeguard Your Phone from Malware – WSJ.com – According to a report by research group Juniper Networks, JNPR -2.07% hackers are increasingly targeting smartphones and other mobile devices with malicious software (also known as malware) to gain access to personal information. The threat is still small in comparison to computers, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't take precautions to protect your smartphone.
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Daily del.icio.us for February 10th through February 11th

  • JsonML (JSON Markup Language) – JsonML (JSON Markup Language) is an application of the JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) data-interchange format. The purpose of JsonML is to provide a compact format for transporting XML-based data via JSON
  • Fresh Update: IntelliJ IDEA 8.1 | JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA Blog – Fresh news, everyone! Hope you share our point of view on new features: there’s simply never enough of them. And performance: you can always get more of it. This is why we’re happy to tell you that IntelliJ IDEA 8.1 is just released. It’s been a really short time since we aired version 8, but thanks to working six days a week without lunch breaks we managed to deliver you this bunch of improvements:
  • Brett Favre tells New York Jets he is retiring – ESPN – Without the tearful public ceremony that accompanied his retirement announcement from the Green Bay Packers just 11 months ago, quarterback Brett Favre has told the New York Jets he is retiring.
  • Scobleizer — Tech geek blogger » Blog Archive Chris Pirillo is wrong about best pocket video cameras « – The Flip is the best because it is the best designed and smallest. It is — in talking with my friends — the most likely to end up in their pocket. A camera carried is a camera that is used and a camera that is used, even if it has slightly lower quality that some other camera, is one that’s better.
  • Enterprise Java Community: Java EE 6 Overview – The details of Java EE 6 have been getting hashed out for quite a few months in the JSR 316 expert group, which I am part of. The goal of this article is to give you an overview of the changes in Java EE 6 as well as encourage your feedback
  • TeamPostgreSQL released, showcases Google Web Toolkit – Webworks S.A. just released TeamPostgreSQL, their web administration and team platform for the PostgreSQL database.

    A JEE web application with a rich AJAX client, the application serves as a showcase of what GWT can deliver in this arena, featuring a complex yet highly dynamic, customizable user interface and fast service invocations that are immediately reflected on the client.

  • FinancialStability.gov – On Tuesday, February 10th, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner outlined a comprehensive plan to restore stability to our financial system. In the address, Secretary Geithner discussed the Obama Administration’s strategy to strengthen our economy by getting credit flowing again to families and businesses, while imposing new measures and conditions to strengthen accountability, oversight and transparency in how taxpayer dollars are spent
  • 1440 Wall Street: Desperation Time for America as Geithner Lays an Egg – It would appear Timothy Geithner#039;s plan to save the world is reaching an impasse – what is going on behind closed doors in Washington?
  • InfoQ: A Message Type Architecture for SOA – One key aspect of SOA Governance that is often overlooked is how Data Governance can complement SOA Governance. Even though they both have very different objectives, they both share a set of metadata often called the “Enterprise Data Model”
  • Every Swear Word on Every Episode of the Sopranos, Ever, in Chronological Order. (video) – Boing Boing – A fun, weird little experiment by director Victor Solomon. quot;I#039;ve been chopping away at it for a year, here and there between other jobs,quot; he explains.

    I was laughing for the first 30 seconds, then kinda hypnotized, then just creeped out, and still couldn#039;t stop watching. Simple and brilliant.

  • DynamicJasper :: Making Jasper Reports dynamic – DynamicJasper (DJ) is an open source free library that hides the complexity of Jasper Reports, it helps developers to save time when designing simple/medium complexity reports generating the layout of the report elements automatically.

Daily del.icio.us for September 27th through October 1st