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.
Advertisement

Daily del.icio.us for April 4th through April 7th

Daily del.icio.us for December 31st through January 4th

  • Barack Obama Is Your New Bicycle – Barack Obama Is Your New Bicycle
  • I’m using Git because it makes me feel cool | unethical blogger – As 2007 became 2008 the writing was on the wall, Git was our new bicycle. It had been blessed by Saint Torvalds and clearly we needed to get in on the ground floor of the new cool before it became mainstream.

    We needed to switch to Git immediately. Who cares if Git is extremely fast, it's not like time is money or something ridiculous like that

  • Why Git is Better Than X – This site is here because I seem to be spending a lot of time lately defending Gitsters against charges of fanboyism, bandwagonism and koolaid-thirst. So, here is why people are switching to Git from X, and why you should too. Just click on a reason to view it.
  • Microsoft Readies Cost-Cuts; Though Massive Layoff Unlikely – NBCBAYAREA- msnbc.com – Microsoft will embark on a significant cost-cutting initiative in 2009, which might begin as early as this month, to offset a global slowdown in sales. However, sources tell Jim Goldman of CNBC, the cuts will largely be handled through attrition and the non-renewal of contract employees, rather than through a rumored, sweeping layoff.
  • Google Launches ‘The Google’ For Older Adults | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source – The popular search engine Google announced plans Friday to launch a new site, TheGoogle.com, to appeal to older adults not able to navigate the original website's single text field and two clearly marked buttons.
  • Javascript Best Practices – This document is a list of best practices and preferred ways of developing javascript code, based on opinions and experience from many developers in the javascript community. Since this is a list of recommendations rather than a list of absolute rules, experienced developers may have slightly differing opinions from those expressed below.
  • ie7-js – A JavaScript library to make MSIE behave like a standards-compliant browser. – IE7 is a JavaScript library to make Microsoft Internet Explorer behave like a standards-compliant browser. It fixes many HTML and CSS issues and makes transparent PNG work correctly under IE5 and IE6.
  • Main – browsersec – Google Code – Browser Security Handbook landing page – This document is meant to provide web application developers, browser engineers, and information security researchers with a one-stop reference to key security properties of contemporary web browsers. Insufficient understanding of these often poorly-documented characteristics is a major contributing factor to the prevalence of several classes of security vulnerabilities.
  • With 2008, Let’s Say Good-bye to Mediocrity – It is our acquiescence that has led to the spread of this culture of mediocrity. We accept dropped phone calls on our wireless networks, computers that constantly crash, broadband networks that are best effort.
  • HtmlUnit 2.4 Released – A new release of the pure GUI-Less browser is available, which allows high-level manipulation of web pages, such as filling forms, clicking links, accessing attributes and values of specific elements within the pages, you do not have to create lower-level requests of TCP/IP or HTTP, but just getPage(url), find a hyperlink, click() and you have all the HTML, JavaScript, and Ajax are automatically processed.
  • Audiolizer Puts Your iTunes Library In The Cloud, But Lala Does It Better – Audiolizer is a new music streaming service that lets you put your iTunes library in the cloud. After uploading your iTunes Library database file, the site will automatically compile a list of links to every song, allowing you to access your favorite music when you’re away from your home computer. Users can also manually search for individual songs.

Daily del.icio.us for April 14th through April 16th

  • Searchable javadocs – Javadocs are good but not great as they miss a key feature of being able to do a full text search. Enter Documancer – It allows you to point to the index.html Javadoc file of a given library and one can then run full text searches through the Javadocs
  • DataCleaner – eobjects – DataCleaner is an open source project concerned with creating a data quality solutions for business and organizations wishing to measure and increase the quality of their data. DataCleaner includes functionality to profile and compare data, to validate da
  • IntelliJ IDEA Blog » Blog Archive » Announcing New Release of JetGroovy Plugin – We’re glad to announce the general availability of the new release of JetGroovy Plugin for IntelliJ IDEA. Version 1.5 brings yet more of IntelliJ IDEA´s smart, advanced features to Groovy and Grails developers
  • HtmlUnit 2.1 Released « A Public Scratchpad – The HtmlUnit team is pleased to announce a new release of HtmlUnit. This latest version includes a number of bug fixes and performance enhancements, and sports excellent support for GWT, jQuery and Sarissa, decent support for Prototype and Dojo, and basic
  • Enterprise 2.0: A Computer Security Nightmare? – Bits – Technology – New York Times Blog – One conclusion, the report notes, is that users are routinely, and fairly easily, circumventing corporate security controls. And that is because traditional firewall technology was not meant to grapple with the diversity of Internet applications of recent
  • Amazon’s cloud computing will surpass its retailing business | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com – Everyone else–Google and Microsoft–are working on their cloud computing services, but they are really in the first revision of their respective offerings. Amazon is ahead and tweaking
  • It’s Only Software » 5 Minute Guide to Spring and Simple[r!] JDBC – I recently worked on a personal project to learn how one can write dead-simple plain old JDBC applications using only Spring Framework 2.5 without an ORM layer. Spring 2.5 has many features that provide some of the convenience of ORM libraries
  • <a href="http:

Daily del.icio.us for January 13th through January 14th

  • Tweak your Ubuntu desktop with Ubuntu Tweak – Download Squad – Ubuntu Tweak makes it easy to customize your desktop environment and a handful of other settings like your startup session and power management settings. The utility runs on Ubuntu 7.04 and 7.10 and could make life a lot easier on Linux/Ubuntu newbies.
  • Project Euler – Project Euler is a series of challenging mathematical/computer programming problems that will require more than just mathematical insights to solve. Although mathematics will help you arrive at elegant and efficient methods, the use of a computer and prog
  • Michael?s Random Thoughts » The Pitfalls of Java as a First Programming Language – A Response – Blaming the first language for a failure to design a good curriculum where other necessary languages are taught appropriately is a naïve argument that misses the point and isn?t helping anyone
  • bobdc.blog: Scraping and linked data – Somehow, code monkeys surrounded by earth-toned cubicle fabric think that it makes them resemble DJs surrounded by crates of vinyl if they use musical buzzwords to refer to the act of combining multiple things into a new one
  • datejs – A JavaScript Date Library – Datejs is an open source JavaScript Date library for parsing, formatting and processing.
  • Microsoft MIX07 – How to Make AJAX Applications Scream on the Client – A recent presentation by Cyra Richardson, Senior Program Manager Lead on the IE team, at MIX 2007 on Making Ajax Applications Scream on the Client went into detail on how developers should approach the problem of making their applications perform well on
  • HTML Purifier 3.0.0 released – HTML Purifier is a standards-compliant HTML filter library written in PHP. HTML Purifier will not only remove all malicious code (better known as XSS) with a thoroughly audited, secure yet permissive whitelist, it will also make sure your documents are st
  • A BigDecimal Cookbook for financial calculations – Computations that yielded amounts, quantities, adjustments, and many other things were generally done with little or no attention to the special precision and rounding concerns that arise when dealing with financial issues.
  • Apache Lenya – Open Source Content Management (Java/XML) v2.0 – The Apache Lenya development community is very proud to announce the 2.0 release of Apache Lenya. Apache Lenya is an Open Source Java/XML Content Management System and comes with revision control, site management, scheduling, search, WYSIWYG editors, and
  • Lightview – Lightview was built to change the way you overlay images on a website.
  • Best Color Tools For Web Designers – Determining the core color for a web project could be easy but finding the right alternatives to match the core can sometimes be difficult. That?s where the color tools play its roles. Color tools help you determine matching color or even suggest sets o
  • HtmlUnit vs HttpUnit « A Public Scratchpad – If you?re using HttpUnit for legacy reasons, it?s a fairly solid package, but don?t expect to get much support. If you?re starting a new project and are trying to decide between these two frameworks, HtmlUnit wins hands down. It has the features,

Daily del.icio.us for Aug 04, 2007 through Aug 09, 2007