NEW EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

CRM - Customer Relationship Management

2011-08-13T11:50:00.001-07:00

CRM is the abbreviation for customer relationship management. CRM entails all aspects of interaction that a company has with its customer, whether it is sales or service-related. CRM is often thought of as a business strategy that enables businessesto:

Understand the customer
Retain customers through better customer experience
Attract new customer
Win new clients and contractsIncrease profitably
Decrease customer management costs

While the phrase customer relationship management is most commonly used to describe a business-customer relationship, however CRM systems are used in the same way to manage business contacts, clients, contract wins and sales leads.

CRM solutions provide you with the customer business data to help you provide services or products that your customers want, provide better customer service, cross-sell and up sell more effectively, close deals, retain current customers and understand who the customer is.

Technology and the Web has changed the way companies approach CRM strategies because advances in technology have also changed consumer buying behavior and offers new ways for companies to communicate with customers and collect data about them. With each new advance in technology -- especially the proliferation of self-service channels like the Web and smartphones -- customer relationships is being managed electronically.

Many aspects of CRM relies heavily on technology; however the strategies and processes of a good CRM system will collect, manage and link information about the customer with the goal of letting you market and sell services effectively.

Organizations frequently looking for ways to personalize online experiences (a process also referred to as mass customization) through tools such as help-desk software, e-mail organizers and different types of enterprise applications.

The Future of Android - open source

2011-08-09T22:05:00.000-07:00

As the Android world grows, it becomes an increasingly juicy target for malware. Infected apps have been spotted in various Android app outlets on numerous occasions. The platform is less restricted than Apple's, for example, and with those freedoms sometimes come security dangers. Critics say Google could address Android's security issues with a few tighter control policies.

The number of attacks on Android devices has been rising over the past few months.

The malware has exotic names such as "Zitmo," "DroidDreamLight," "Hong Tou Tou," "DroidKungFu," "YZHCSMS," "Geinimi" and "Plankton."

In January 2010, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) removed more than 50 fake banking apps from the Android market, and in March of this year, it removed another 50 infected apps, Amit Sinha, chief technology officer at Zscaler, told LinuxInsider.

Meanwhile, Android smartphones are growing in popularity. They have extended their lead in the United States and Canadian markets, according to IDC's worldwide mobile phone market report for Q2, 2011.

That will make for a bigger pool of targets.

"Android has the potential to become the dominant OS for smartphones," Sinha said. "And ... hackers will aggressively target Android."

Add in Google's support for NFC -- near field communications -- in Android; its launching of Google Wallet, which is undergoing field tests now; and PayPal's using NFC on Android to make payments easier, and we could have a bit of a problem.

But that's not all. Even if e-wallet features don't take off, NFC has another ace in the hole -- it lets owners of NFC-capable smartphone transfer documents by touching their devices together.

You can watch a YouTube video demoing that feature on the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N9 smartphone here.

The implications for enterprise security are vast, especially when you recall that the increasing consumerization of IT means people are using their own mobile devices at work.

Is Google's to blame for the increasing number of attacks on the Android OS because of Android's design and the hands-off policy Google maintains towards the OS? Will Android survive and be made more secure? Or will Google's laissez-faire attitude finally kill off the OS?

Google did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

Follow the Money

In September, Fortinet came across a banking Trojan it named \u201cZitmo.\u201d That Trojan steals one-time banking passwords. It resurfaced in July.

The mobile malware threat is expected to grow, security experts warn.

"In addition to mobile banking, many retail commerce transactions are expected to take place on mobile phones, and the cybercriminals will go where the money is," Neil Daswani, CTO and co-founder of Dasient, told LinuxInsider.

However, we may have some time before mobile banking really becomes a major security issue.

Many banks still haven't enabled mobile transactions on their websites, indicated Mickey Boodaei, CEO of Trusteer.

"Since online fraud is mostly a big numbers game, attacking mobile bankers is not yet a profitable fraud operation," Boodaei remarked.

That situation will change soon. Trusteer predicts that within 12 to 24 months more than 5 percent of all Android phones, iPads and iPhones could become infected by mobile malware.

Preparing for the Mobile Malware Rush

Device makers and app developers have to shape up in preparation for the expected flood of attacks on NFC-enabled devices once mobile banking takes off.

"The NFC Forum defines the contactless protocol between devices, so much of the security is the responsibility of application providers and manufacturers," Debbie Arnold, the forum's director, told LinuxInsider.

The forum's role is just to define the contactless protocol between devices, Arnold said.

Was Android Built Wrong?

The problem lies in Android's security architecture, and the proof is that it's easy to build applications that can get access to sensitive operating system resources such as text messages, voice, location and more, Trusteer's Boodaei told LinuxInsider.

However, not everyone agrees this is really an issue.

"While the security architecture of Android as well as other mobile OSes can certainly be improved, just as desktop OS security has improved over the decades, the security architecture itself isn't responsible for malware propagation," Daswani said.

Tens of thousands of new malware binary variants are created for Windows and Mac OS, for example, Daswani pointed out. The problem of security isn't going away any time soon, he opined.

Permissions Are a Hollow Protection

In its defense, Google has repeatedly pointed out that all downloaded apps request permission to access resources on uses' smartphones, and users can just say no.

That isn't enough, Boodaei contends.

Users usually just say yes because many applications request access to an "extensive list" of resources, Boodaei explained.

Google could make Android's permissions model more fine-grained, Dasient's Daswani suggested.

For example, when an Android app requests access to the Internet, it gets access to everything, including malicious domains and websites, Daswani said. Instead, Google should perhaps restrict an app's access to the Internet to only what it actually needs.

"That follows the principle of least privilege, which is well-known in the security community,\u201d Daswani remarked.

Google's Slow Anti-Malware Shuffle

In addition, Google doesn't check apps before letting their authors post them on the Android Market. Also, Google has sometimes been criticized as slow to respond to complaints about apps containing malware.

"Distributing fraudulent Android applications is trivial," Trusteer's Boodaei alleged. "There are no real controls around the submission process that could identify and prevent the publication of malicious applications. Compared to Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) App Store, the Android Market is the Wild West."

Further, a Google Web page requesting that Google review and take down inappropriate apps from the Android Market is hard to find, Boodaei said.

The form doesn't appear to be of much use, either, he said.

"We used it a few times with no results," Boodaei groused. "In order to have an application on the Android Market taken down, we had to use contacts within Google who are not available to the average user."

Google needs to make "major improvements" in its process of identifying and removing malicious apps from the Android Market, Boodaei said.

"Google already has a kill switch to remotely remove malicious apps, but this approach is reactive," ZScaler's Sinha stated. "They need a more proactive approach to screening and testing apps prior to allowing them on the market."

Hierarchy of programming languages

2011-08-01T21:45:00.001-07:00

How To Use Google Plus....Google Plus(+) is Better than Facebook

2011-06-30T01:56:00.000-07:00

Waiting for a Google Plus invite? Google is rolling out the service in waves and you can expect it to become a ubiquitous social option in the coming months. We have been playing with the service since getting invites yesterday and there are a lot of things to like about Google's new social initiative.

Unlike Google's last big invite-only rollout of a social initiative - Google Wave - users will not be confounded on just what the heck you are supposed to with the service when signing up for the first time. From Friendster, Friendfeed, MySpace and Facebook, users are familiar with how a social platform is theoretically supposed to look. At its core level, Plus is not that much different. Yet, there is so much more. How do you get started with Google Plus? Let's break down the nuts and bolts.

Create Your Circles

Imagine the ability to break down Facebook into its various constituent parts and keep them separate from each other as opposed to one giant feed. That is what Google has done with Plus. There is one main stream where all your friends updates show up then the option to see updates from only certain groups like "Work," "Friends" or "Family." This is the essence of Circles.

From the initial interface, you will see four buttons - Home, Photos, Profile and Circles.

The first thing you are going to want to do is set up your circles. Click on the tab and it will bring you to a interface where all of your contacts in Gmail (not just Gmail addresses, but all of your contacts) are listed in a panel on top of the screen. Below is a panel that has your various circles. To add a contact to a circle, drag from the top of the list to the appropriate group. Contacts can be added to multiple circles.

One of the initial problems I had from the circles interface was that I added a couple of "Friends" into my "Work" circle and could not figure out how to get them out. You can do this from the user streams by hovering over the person's name and hovering over "Add to circles" and clicking the appropriate boxes. Yet, from the circles interface, that was not readily apparent. To take people out of a circle, hover above the circle, grab their icon and drag it back into the people plane.

One of the great differentiators between Twitter and Facebook is the "unbalanced" or "balanced" follow. Facebook was initially a two-way follow paradigm - I friend you, you friend me and we see each other's updates. This has been changed with the ability to "like" groups, brands and pages without them following you back. Twitter has always been a one-way follow - I follow you and you do not necessarily have to follow me back.

This line has been blurred in circles. If a person is in your contacts, they can be added to a circle and will get a notification that has happend (but not what circle they have actually been added to). There is also a "follow" circle. Just like Twitter, you can follow people and see their updates without them having to follow you back. As your circles evolve this could allow to track different interests, like Twitter lists.

The Stream and "Bumping"

Once you have set up your circles, go back to the Home screen to see the results. Below the profile picture you will see the choices of stream. You can view your entire stream at once (à la Facebook) or by particular circle.

There are two other options below your circles - Incoming and Notifications. Clicking incoming will bring you to messages that have been sent by people outside of your circles. Notifications will show you when people in your circles have commented on something you have posted, or something you have commented on.

Below the circles and notifications there is a tab dubbed "Sparks." More on that below.

One of the killer features of Gmail, or any Google product, is Chat. It has made its way into Plus and sits in the familiar left-hand, bottom-right portion of the screen that it is found in Gmail. Users with a lot of Circle and Chat contacts will like the ability to enable chat for particular groups. Want to surface friends and family but not acquaintances? Plus will let you do that.

If you are using Plus in a Chrome browser, desktop notifications do not pop up when someone sends you a message like it would in Gmail.

Posting a status update in Plus is not like sending a Tweet or updating Facebook. The core functions of an update are present - photos, links, video and location - but when you hit "share" it doesn't automatically post your message to everybody in your circles. You have the option to decide which circles your update is posted to, from individual groups to all circles, to extended circles, or just a single person.

An interesting feature in the user stream is that conversations will surface back to the top of the feed when subsequent comments are made on a thread. This, according to Google developer Jean-Baptiste Queru, is called "bumping." Google Buzz has this same capability and it was also a feature of FriendFeed.

Photos

Photos in Plus are relatively self-explanatory. Users can update photos from their computers or from their phones, see photos that people in their circles have uploaded. With the Android app, there is a way to upload any photo that you take with your phone straight to Plus, an interesting if slightly disconcerting feature.

When you add a photo, it will prompt you to create an album. Once that album is created it will ask which of your circles you would like to share it with. This is a prime differentiator from Facebook where all of your photos are visible to all of your friends by default (you can change who can view certain photos in Facebook preferences). You can also pick an individual to share photos with instead of an entire circle.

Photo uploading is easy within Plus. Just like adding a picture or an attachment to a Gmail document, you can drag-and-drop from your desktop or click the on the upload button and browse your computer for pictures.

Users can also add photos by posting them in status updates or by uploading them through the Profile tab.

Profile

If you use any Google products and have a Google account, you have a Google Profile. Profiles are unknown to most of the Internet because, until now, it was relatively useless to anyone but Google.

Your Google Profile is now the hub of you Plus experience, the backbone that everything else is built upon. There are six tabs in your profile page - posts, about, photos, videos, +1s and Buzz.

A significant change to your profile page is that there is now a location where your +1s live. Until now, when you clicked +1 on content on the Web, nothing happened. The information was sent to Google and integrated into some type of esoteric search algorithm. Users can now see what people have +1ed through their Google Profile. Unlike the Facebook share/like/recommend buttons, it does not go straight into your stream but rather to the profile page.

Sparks and Hangouts

Hangouts is a new feature rolled out with Plus. Essentially it is an area where your circles or a select group of friends can video chat all on one screen. To start a Hangout, go to the "Welcome" button in the home tab. It will prompt you to start a hangout and invite individuals or entire circles. Up to 10 people can be in a hangout at once and it will be seen in that circle or users' stream.

Sparks is the part of Plus where you can find content on the Web that you are interested in. In the "Field Trial" version of Plus, it looks like Sparks is a randomized version of content and news generated through Google News. Sparks can be a dashboard for things you are interested in on the Web. When you do a search in Sparks, it will predict what you are searching for with a drop down menu (like old Google search, not quite like Google Instant). You can pin particular topics you search for to the Sparks dashboard for quick access.

You can share articles found in Sparks with a share button on the bottom of every article that surfaces in a search. Like everything else in Plus, it can be shared with a specific person, circle, group of circles or the general public.

Google Plus brings real-life social sharing to life

2011-06-30T01:54:00.000-07:00

Google Plus, the social thingie from Google is out. This project is under the wraps from Google and as all things Google, it made a subtle launch. The service is rolled out but it is invitation only and you can sign up here.

Google has said this with a lot of gumption in its blog post about Google Plus :

The problem is that today’s online services turn friendship into fast food—wrapping everyone in “friend” paper—and sharing really suffers

As per Google Plus, today’s sharing and social networks are sloppy, scary and insensitive.And I can’t agree more. On facebook whatever I share is just out there for everyone to see. On twitter, a link which might be meant for a few tweeples cannot be posted. And there is no way to have a group conversation on twitter, nor facebook. Skype has it but it misses all the other elements of a social network.

Google Plus is set to change all that. In fact Google plus isn’t just another social product. It is an extension of Google itself. Hence the plus. To do that it has introduced Circles, Hangouts, Huddle and Sparks.

Google Plus isn’t basically a one hammer hits all nails approach. It is one hammer for all important nails. Facebook and Twitter can suck on that. Or not.

Circles

From your group of friends you can share what matters to the people who matter the most. Stuff related to cricket can be shared with people who are just cricket fans in your circle. There is no ranting about Munaf Patel or Sreesanth and filling up everybody’s timeline like what happens in twitter. Relevance is paramount for Circles.

Sparks

Sparks is a new content sharing and discovery engine. On facebook all the family updates, picture updates and a video you liked get the same kind of attention. With Sparks you can separate that attention out. Something personal, it will go in to circles. Something interesting and worth sharing, come hang out in Sparks.

Huddle

Huddle is to let everyone in the circle know what’s going on. Kind of an asynchronous messaging system like Google Wave but much simpler.

Hangouts

This is a group messaging app aimed at smartphones and tablets and most importantly at Skype. Facebook can integrate with Skype all it wants but Hangout is much cooler. Huddling up is like walking in to a bar and telling everyone that you are available for some face time. This will be the uninterrupted face time you spend with the people. You are hanging out.

Google Plus Better Then FaceBook...Some Reasons to Be Optimistic About Google Plus

2011-06-30T01:51:00.000-07:00

Here’s a dirty little secret: I thought Google Wave was going to be awesome. I admit this so that you can immediately discount everything I’m about to write if you like, but wait, hear me out!

If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past 48 hours or so then you’ve heard about Google’s new “Facebook killer.” Because despite Google’s serious attempts to not brand themselves that way (“It’s a project, not a product! We’re not competing with Facebook!”), media article after media article has been using a term that makes me think we’re not talking about social networking at all but instead the upcoming season of Dexter. So yes, everyone knows that it’s meant to compete with Facebook. Because Google would be stupid not to want to compete with Facebook, which is perhaps the number one source of valuable user data they’re not getting.

Of course, we have reason to be wary. Because Google Wave was impenetrable and Google Buzzmade Facebook’s privacy woes look amateur. And there’s a lot working against them in terms of adoption, because so many people are so firmly ensconced in Facebook that they’d have to be dragged out kicking and screaming. Years ago I remember thinking that Facebook would have difficulty sucking the user base out of Friendster, but that was nowhere near the scale we’re talking about now – Facebook is pretty much taking over the world. And of course the thing about an online social network is, it only works if your “real” social network is there. Plus if everyone moves over from Facebook to Google Plus, just think about all those dead crops!

Still, I am optimistic that this thing could actually work. Here’s why:

The reason I don’t use Facebook much is because every time I post something I have to think “Do I want my father to read this? My academic adviser? My boss? My friends? That guy I dated for two weeks in high school?” Yes, Facebook does provide ways to make posts selectively private, but it seems like this is exactly the problem that Circles is trying to solve.
As xkcd points out, on one hand you’ll never be able to convince your parents to switch. On the other hand, you’ll never be able to convince your parents to switch!
The adoption problems re: tearing people away from Facebook (and their crops!) may be mitigated in part by the ease of adding people via gmail. What’s one more Google product in our lives? Plus Google’s limited roll-out strategy seems to have been successful in the past at creating demand and buzz. I wonder if they considered buying MySpace at a low, low, discounted price to lure over the two people and some bands who are left there.
Given the huge shift in Facebook towards games like Farmville, as well as other apps, it’s possible that Google Plus can be more of a pure social network without all the noise. I see those two functions as very different things, and for those who like to play social games, there may be room for more than one site in their lives.
After the debacle with Buzz, Google is heavily motivated to take privacy very seriously. I am optimistic on this count, though on the other hand, I’ve heard some grumbling (unverified) that Plus makes gender a mandatory public field, and this is the kind of thing that causes problems. So we’ll see.
Hangouts is actually something new – more similar to Skype than Facebook. The spontaneous gathering idea is interesting, but what really appeals to me is the potential to support a social practice I already have – which is watching Netflix remotely with people. For friends who live far away, we queue up a movie (usually a bad one) and then chat in IM as we watch. When I saw someone tweeting yesterday about “hanging out” in Plus watching YouTube videos with friends, I got a glimmer of hope for this.

So will Google Plus (and by the way, “Google+” is such an awful name for the purposes of writing, I can’t even express) be the “Facebook Killer”? Doubtful. But there might still be something there, and maybe I’m just too sunshine-and-unicorns, but I’m excited to find out.

Google’s Facebook Competitor, The Google+ Social Network, Finally Arrives

2011-06-30T01:49:00.000-07:00

Google’s long expected second shot at taking on Facebook in the social networking space has arrived in the form of the Google+ Project. It has some interesting twists on the social networking model but is far from a Facebook-killer.

That Name

The terrible name is a bad start. Google+? Google+! I can’t even question or exclaim about the bad name without it looking bad in writing.

Pronounced “Google Plus,” the product is officially written as Google+ — making placing any punctuation after the name fairly awkward.

Seriously, I’m cursing whoever made the final decision to go with Google+ as a name. Wasn’t the Google +1 sharing service bad enough?

Now we have Google+, which in turn allows you to +1 things that you’ve Google+’d. My head hurts from writing that.

In this article, I’ll generally stick with the Google+ name except where Google Plus is more legible, due to punctuation.

The Google+ Project

What about the product itself? Google dubs Google+ as a “project” rather than a product, stressing it’s part of making Google itself more social rather than being a standalone social network to take on Facebook.

“It’s ‘Plus’ because it takes products from Google and makes them better and ‘project’ because it’s an ongoing set of products,” said Vic Gundotra, the senior vice president who oversees Google’s social products.

But is it Facebook competitor, I asked in a follow-up question. Google emailed back:

No. We realize that today people are increasingly connecting with one another on the web. But the ways in which we connect online are limited and don’t mimic our real-life relationships. The Google+ project is our attempt to make online sharing even better. We aren’t trying to replace what’s currently available, we just want to introduce a new way to connect online with the people that matter to you.

OK, but as the saying goes, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. And Google+ looks like and quacks like Facebook in several ways.

Circles

Most important, Google+ is a social network of your friends, family and other contacts, a way to connect to these people, just like Facebook.

Unlike Facebook, Google+ is built from the ground up around the concept of sharing material with groups of people, called “Circles.” Here’s an example of how they look:

The idea is that you can easily drag-and-drop people into different types of Circles, which you can then use for sharing different types of things.

For example, you can create a “Family” circle where you might chose to share things only with family members in it, while another “Work” circle might contain work colleagues who only see what you share to that.

Google+ Circles Vs Facebook Lists & Groups

While Facebook might not have been built from the beginning with a Circles-like sharing concept, Facebook does currently have two features that are similar: Friend Lists & Groups.

Added in December 2007, Friend Lists allow you to share some of your Facebook information with specific groups of friends (or other selected contacts) that you create. They’re also supposed to allow you to group message people in a list, though I couldn’t get this to work, when I tested it today.

Friend Lists don’t allow for selective sharing. But the updated Facebook Groups feature thatcame out last October does provide this, a way to share what you want with whom you want.

How does Circles weight up against these? I can’t say first hand. The Google+ product wasn’t live for me to test when I wrote this (our hands-on review will come later today).

Friend Lists are nice in that if you pick one person, such as below where I selected Facebook communications chief Elliott Schrage, you get relevant suggestions that appear (other Facebook execs who’ve friended me on Facebook):

But that list can’t be used, as best I can tell, to start an associated group to share just to these people. Instead, when I tested today, I was still forced to make a group, then pick people individually to add to that.

So, the drag-and-drop interface of Circles looks appealing. Then again, if you have hundreds of “friends,” it still might turn into too much organization. Maybe people will use it to create some select groups that they really want (family, close friends, those in a club, etc.). But if it turns into a wonderful tool, it’s hard to imagine that Facebook couldn’t easily match it.

Who’s In Your Circle?

There’s no limit to the number of circles you can create. But where do the people come from who will be in your circles?

First, any contacts you’ve stored through the Google Contacts service will be available. If you have no contacts, you can import them through the CSV format, which many contact services will export out to.

Google also said that it is looking into ways to directly important contacts from Yahoo and Microsoft. Facebook wasn’t mentioned.

That’s not surprising. Facebook hasn’t allowed the export of friends’ email addresses, except to … Yahoo and Microsoft. The stories below explains more about this:

What’s all this mean in practical terms? Everyone in Google+ will effectively be starting from scratch.

If you already use things like Gmail, you probably have Google Contacts that give you email addresses of your social network. If you don’t, you can import — and Yahoo and Microsoft may serve as go-betweens to help you bring information from Facebook into Google Plus.

From Email To Virtual Person

The bigger issue is that your contacts — be that from within Google or imported from Facebook — are basically just email addresses. The won’t have any social connection information with them.

Google Contacts won’t know that a particular person whose email address you have is friends with other people you know. A Facebook import won’t turn email addresses gathered from there into links with other people who use Facebook.

Instead, what will really jump start Google+ is if a significant number of people come into the system and start claiming profiles within it, effectively turning those email addresses into virtual people who have connections within Google Plus.

That’s a big if. If you’re already happy using Facebook, you may have no more incentive to use Google’s new social network than someone already happy using Google has to switch over to Bing. What you’re using is doing the job just fine.

Buzz Off Google Buzz

When people do get into the system, that does open up another way to add contacts. You’ll be able to search through other members who have registered.

But here’s the crazy thing. Those connections you may have already formed using Google Buzz? Remember, Google’s last attempt to take on Facebook from February 2010? None of that is being used for Google Plus. The two products are being kept completely separate.

I suspect Google’s trying to be as cautious as possible, in the wake of its settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission (see Google Settles FTC Charges Over Buzz, Agrees To 20 Years Of Privacy Audits). Buzz seems tainted, so keeping Google+ isolated from that may be deemed the most prudent course.

And what’s the future for Buzz, with Google+ coming out? Google told me in a follow-up email:

The short answer is it won’t have any major impact on Buzz at launch. Buzz users will still see a Buzz tab on their Google profile, and Buzz will continue working as it always has. Google+ users can also be Buzz users or can decide to just share their content using one of the products. Over time, we’ll determine what makes the most sense in terms of integrating the products.

Google+ Stream

Now let’s talk about how you see what’s being shared by those in your network, as well as what you can specifically share.

Information appears in your “Stream,” which is akin to Facebook’s news feed. At the top of your stream is a sharing box. Actually, two sharing boxes:

In the new black navigation bar that began showing up for some people this week, there’s a “Share” area to the right side. That bar, by the way, has been dubbed the “One Google” bar, Google told me. No matter where you are on Google, you’ll have the ability to share something out to Google Plus.

In the Stream itself, there’s a longer box, where you can enter a status update or use icons to upload and share photo and videos. You can also share links or your location, if you’ve allowed Google to track that for you. On mobile devices, you can select from a drop-down of nearby places to check-in.

The check-in feature also raises questions about Google Latitude — does it get absorbed into Google+ eventually? What about HotPot?

What do you see from others? Here’s an example:

In this screenshot, the person is viewing what’s been shared only by people in their “Bike Geeks” groups, as highlighted on the left side. By selecting another circle that’s listed, they would see only information being shared by that group.

Friends, Followers & Off-Network Friends

As with Twitter (or with Facebook, when it comes to fan pages), it’s possible with Google+ to follow other people on the network, even if they don’t reciprocate and follow you or friend you back.

Google says that if you follow someone this way, you’ll only see what they choose to share with everyone publicly. If they share some things more restrictively, with particular circles, for example, those outside of those circles won’t see that.

Somewhat related, you can be friends with people who aren’t formally part of Google Plus. If they’re an email-only contact and never formally join the service, you can still add them to circles and share with them.

When you do this, they’ll apparently be sent an email with whatever you wanted to share, a picture, an update and so on.

The downside is that if they’re not on Google Plus, they’ll get a notification anytime you share anything. So if you’re a big sharer, potentially you might hit some of your friends with a lot of email.

Where’s +1?

In the stream example above, there was a +1 button at the bottom of the photo. Yes, anything you like within Google+ can be +1′d, in the way that anything you like on Facebook can be liked with Facebook Like buttons.

If you do that, do your friends on Google+ see that action, in the way that friends on Facebook may see what you like? Nope. Not to my understanding,

Further more, all those Google +1 buttons that are now starting to appear on Google search worldwide? Those Google +1 buttons that publishers have diligently been adding to their sites since they were released earlier this month? Nothing from those button clicks flows back into Google Plus.

It’s crazy. It makes no sense. It’s as if Facebook launched its Like buttons but forgot to hook them up to flow information back into Facebook.

Right now, it remains the case that if you want to see what someone has +1′d, then you have to remember to go to their Google Profile page on a regular basis, then hope they’ve enabled the +1 tab on that profile, then rinse and repeat for other people.

Google told me that it would be “logical” to see +1 flow into Google+ and that “one could guess eventually” it will happen. So, I’m pretty sure we will see this happen. But when it will launch is unclear, and it really feels like an incredible mistake that it’s not part of the launch.

Google Sparks: Tips On What To Share

Time for more features. What if you started a social network and no one knew what to share? That’s a problem that Google Sparks is intended to solve.

Think of it like Google Alerts made to flow into Google Plus. Google Sparks lets you follow topics of interest:

You can browse suggestions or set up your own keyword-based searches. Then when you select a “Sparks” link, you’ll get a feed of search results that you might wish to share. Here’s an example of what Sparks might show for a fashion topic:

The relevancy is supposed to be tweaked to find especially sharable content that people are already clicking on, things that are very visual with photo and pictures.

I got a brief demo trying two searches, and the results didn’t thrill me. They were OK, but they didn’t feel particularly shareable. Still, the feature will probably be useful to some, and I can’t really assess the relevancy either way on such limited testing.

Hangouts: Group Video Chat

Google seems to be hanging most of its hopes that Google+ will attract people from Facebook on two main features, I’d say. One is the aforementioned Circles sharing feature. The other is the Hangout video chat feature.

With Hangouts, up to 10 people at a time can all interact through video:

The demo I saw of the system was compelling. As one participant spoke, the main image automatically changed to that person. You can also play video that everyone watches.

Gundotra spent some time talking with me about how Google has examined the social dynamics of video chat, to get people more comfortable participating. The key is to get several people all involved casually, rather than to barge in with a solitary invite.

He used a “talking to your neighbor” analogy to explain more. You’re probably are hesitant to knock a neighbor’s door and disturb them just because you want to talk. But if you saw them outside on their porch, Gundotra said, you’d probably feel better saying “Hi” when passing by. If two neighbors were sitting and talking, you’d probably feel rude not also stopping and chatting.

Hence the Hangouts name. When someone launches a Hangout, this shows up on the feed that goes out to their friends. As more people join, the notifications get updated to show the number participating. As that number rises, Google says even more people are compelled to take part.

The party ends at 10, however. No more can participate for scale reasons and also because the group dynamics get too hard, Gundotra said. If someone leaves, others can come in.

The puzzling thing to me is that Google’s not made it possible for anyone to stream the chat out to non-participants. If you have a group of friends, and not all can take part at once, others might be interested just to listen in.

Beyond that, Hangouts seems like a pretty awesome tool for those who wanted to record video shows. But there’s no way to save what happens.

Huddle: Group Text Chat

Somewhat related to Hangouts is Huddle, a group text chat service. I can’t really tell you more than that. Google didn’t cover this during my talk with them about Google Plus last week, so I’ve only got a screenshot for you and a promise will cover it more in our coming hands-on piece:

Huddle is for Android 2.0+ phones, iPhone 4.0+ phones and SMS, Google tells me.

Instant Upload

The last major feature of Google+ is called “Instant Upload.”

For those with Android phones, you can have any picture you take be uploaded to a centralized — and private — photo album area.

Google tells me they hope to bring it to other phones, as well.

Getting Google+

Want to try the service? Right now, it’s strictly invite only. Some press are being allowed in, along with others that Google hand picks. There’s no ETA on when wider invites will be available.

Unusually, this isn’t being called a beta test or an experiment but rather a “field trial” that’s meant to finally gather some feedback from outside Google itself.

The limited test is probably wise. It’ll give Google more time to discover things it might not have anticipated being problems, as was the case with Buzz.

As for a wider release, and possible success, it’s anyone’s guess. As I said earlier, if you’re happy using Facebook, there seems relatively little to make you want to switch over to Google Plus, at the moment.

Perhaps with further Google +1 integration, that might change. Perhaps if there are people who want a Facebook alternative, Google’s now got a core to build on for them. At least the guessing about what Google might be doing is over.

7 features available only in Google Chrome

2011-06-07T01:28:00.000-07:00

We have already seen in recent news that Google reserved - legitimately - some advantages and features to its own services and machinery. For example, Google Maps navigation, 3D view of buildings in vector or Google Music , many services that are currently available on the Android smartphones.

So too with its web browser Chrome, which offers some functionality related to Google that you can not find - or not in the same form - in other browsers. The blog Google Operating System has wisely listed seven features available exclusively in Chrome .

1. Printing natively in Google Docs. It is more useful to download PDFs in Adobe Reader to print. You can printdirectly from Google Chrome.

2. Import files into Google Docs. Other browsers require the installation of a Java applet to do so. This is not the case for Google Chrome.

3. Speech input in Google Translate. The latest version of Google Chrome can tell the browser to obtain a translation of the text, rather than enter the keyboard. We talked about it here: Google is experimenting with voice search on the PC .

4 & 5. The notification alerts on your desktop to Gmail and Google Calendar. When you receive a new email or you must be warned of an impending next appointment, Chrome sends a warning not too intrusive on your desktop.

6. Opening PDF attachments in the integrated viewer. Rather than opening the PDFs in Google Docs, Chrome opens them directly in the browser.

7. Drag and drop attachments Gmail. If in Firefox you can already drag an attachment from your desktop into an email, the reverse is not possible. Google Chrome, if you can drag an attachment received in an email directly to your desktop.

Cosmetic features may encourage large consumers to take the plunge and leave their current browser to Google Chrome ...

WebP: A new image format for the Web

2011-05-24T00:08:00.000-07:00

WebP is a new image format that provides lossy compression for photographic images. In a large scale study of 900,000 web images, WebP images were 39.8% smaller than jpeg images of similar quality. A WebP file consists of VP8 image data, and a container based on RIFF. The standalone libwebp library serves as a reference implementation for the WebP specification and is available at this git repository and as a tarball. Webmasters and web developers can use the WebP image format to create smaller and better looking images that can help make the web faster.
Did you know? WebP is pronounced "weppy".

How WebP works

WebP uses predictive coding to encode an image, the same methodology used by the VP8 video codec to compress keyframes in videos. Predictive coding uses the values in neighboring blocks of pixels to predict the values in a block, and then encodes only the difference (residual) between the actual values and the prediction.
The residuals typically contain many zero values, which can be compressed much more effectively. The residuals are then transformed, quantized and entropy-coded as usual. WebP also uses variable block sizes.

WebP support

WebP is supported by a variety of tools. In addition, it is now natively supported in Google Chrome, the Google Chrome Frame plug-in for Internet Explorer and Opera 11.10.
Developers have also added support to a variety of image editing tools. This release also provides a lightweight encoding and decoding library, libwebp and command line tools cwebp and dwebp for converting images to and from the WebP format. The full source code is available on the download page.

WebP converter download
Convert your favorite collection from PNG and JPEG to WebP by downloading the precompiled cwebp conversion tool for Linux, Windows or Mac OS X.

Google’s WebP Image Format Takes On JPEGs With Sharper Pictures (Google is on a mission to make the Web faster)

2011-05-20T23:21:00.000-07:00

Google is on a mission to make the Web faster. One thing that slows down pageload times are fat image files. Even JPEG and PNG files can get pretty big. So Google is developing a new image format called WebP (which is a sister format to its WebM project for videos).

The key to making image files on the Web smaller without losing sharpness is better compression of the original file. Today, Google announced via the Chromium blog that the compression algorithms for WebP just got better and that they can even handle different parts of an image separately so that parts of it can be displayed without waiting for the entire image to be compressed and decompressed.

The images above, for instance, are from this gallery comparing JPEG to WebP. The WebP images are significantly smaller, but look just as sharp. Can you tell the difference? Unfortunately, WebP is only supported in Chrome and Opera browsers. Google products such as Gmail, Picassa Web albums, and Google Instant Previews also support WebP. But other than Opera, it’s pretty much an all-Google affair.

Websites aren’t going to start using WebP images just for Google Chrome visitors. But if it does speed things up without reducing the quality of images, other browsers will start supporting it as well or else be left behind.

Create SEO friendly URL`s using mod rewrite in PHP (.htaccess)

2011-05-18T02:51:00.000-07:00

In this tutorial I will show you how to transform this:

http://www.mywebsite.com/tutorials.php?id=123&title=mod_rewrite&category=php

into this

http://www.mywebsite.com/tutorials/php/mod_rewrite-123

Why to rewrite your URL`s ?
The main reason is because static URL`s (the second URL is static) are indexed more faster than dynamic URL`s (like the first one), because from a static URL is easier to understand what the page is about both for search engines and your visitors. When using dynamic URL`s there is an another problem: search engines are reading only the beginning of the long URL`s, so if your addresses are different only at the end, than search engines will see the same URL for all of your pages and from this reason none will be indexed.

How this works ?
We will use Apache mod_rewrite. The mod_rewrite transforms back the second URL into the first URL, so the server will access the "ugly" address, but the visitors and the search engines will see the "clear" one. mod_rewrite simply rewrites the URL`s what meets specific conditions into addresses what are understood by the server.

Let`s rewrite it!
The code what rewrites the website address needs to be placed in your .htaccess file (if you don`t have it in your root folder, create it), the code is very short:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^tutorials/(.*)/(.*)-([0-9]+)/?$ /tutorials.php?id=$3&title=$2&category=$1

Take it apart!
The first line: RewriteEngine on simply does what it says, it starts the rewrite engine.
Now let`s take apart the second line:

RewriteRule - this tells the server about the rule to follow when rewriting the URL^ - this exponential sign means the start of the URL: http://www.mywebsite.com/tutorials - this word is simply added to the website adress/ - this character separates the directories (.*) - this tells the server that here will be placed some data (any kind of characters) (e.g.: php)- - this character will be simply added to the website adress([0-9]) - this tells the server that here will be placed a digit (e.g: 1)+ - the plus sign tells the server that here can be more digits (e.g.: 123)? - this sign tell the server that the character in it`s front it`s not required (so the URL will work with and without the last "/")$ - the dollar sign tells the server that here is the end of the rule

The last part of the line is the old address, the value of each variable (id, title and category) are changed to $3, $2 and $1. mod_rewrite takes these variables and places them in their new position in the new URL. In the first place for data (the first (.*)) it places the $1`s value (the category value), in the second place the value of $2 and so on. If you want to change the order just change the $1, $2 and $3 order, but be careful to set the right data type in the new URL.

Benefits of Programming in Ruby on Rails

2011-05-18T02:10:00.000-07:00

There are several programming languages that to-be programmers (or current programmers) can choose from. For first-time programmers, choosing a programming language can be difficult. There are many programming languages that are dying out, just aren’t popular, or are just generally hard to learn. It would be a shame for any first-time programmer to purchase books to learn a language to find that it is too difficult. It would also be a shame to learn a programming language that has no application at work. Ruby is a great programming language because it offers a great feature called Ruby on Rails. Rails is a web framework that can be used by programmers to speed up development.

The programming language, Ruby, was created in the mid 1990’s in Japan, by Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto. Ruby is based on Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp and was written to create a programming language that, according to Matsumoto, “was more powerful than Perl, and more object-oriented than Python.”

One of the goals of Ruby is to allow the simple and fast creation of web applications. The language itself satisfies this goal. Because of this, there is much less tedious work with this language than many other programming languages. Ruby is also free of charge. It is also free to copy, use, modify, and distribute. Since Ruby can be modified, programmers can make necessary changes and can code without feeling restricted. Another feature of Ruby is its mark-and-sweep garbage collection which allows programmers the ability to code without having to worry about the need to maintain reference counts in extension libraries. Also, if an operating system allows for it, Ruby can dynamically load extension libraries. Ruby currently ranks as the 9th most popular programming language in the world. There are many online guides where Ruby programmers to-be can learn how to program in Ruby.

Ruby on Rails, often simply called Rails, is an open source web application framework that was designed for Ruby by David Heinemeier Hansson and was released in July 2004. Ruby on Rails makes use of an object relational mapping layer known as the ActiveRecord. Because of this, programmers do not have to specify database column names in class definitions. Rails will retrieve this information on its own from the database based on the class name. Rails also has a testing framework built in which allows programmers to write test cases which helps them create more reliable, robust code.

Ruby on Rails Proves it Deserves the Hype (JAVA VS RUBY)

2011-05-18T02:08:00.001-07:00

With the multitude of programming languages out there such as Fortran, Java, C++ and C#, you may wonder why Ruby on Rails has suddenly become such a hot topic in the development world. Created in the late 1990's by an individual in Japan, the Ruby programming language had a cult following but never reached top-tier status. In 2004, a company called 37 Signals released a Web programming framework called Rails, which was originally developed for their own in-house projects. Rails was written using the Ruby programming language. It is the combination of Ruby and Rails together that has generated notable excitement in the development community, and the emerging language and application framework is proving to be a game-changer to the world of Web application development.

Ruby on Rails' Impact on Productivity

Rails is an integrated framework that utilizes the dynamic nature of the object-oriented Ruby programming language. Rails developers emphasize features of the framework for productivity rather than tools, and they take a common approach to Web architecture that should satisfy the needs of a large portion of the Web application projects in the wild.

As Rails was developed, the innovators of the framework realized that there were a multitude of features inherent to the framework that could benefit all Web applications. Rails is an extremely productive framework for database-backed Web applications. It is different from other frameworks in that it preaches convention over configuration. Typically, if you were building a computer program, you had to start from scratch and rely heavily on the skills and experience of the team's architect to develop and adhere to standards of writing good software. Rails primarily uses conventions to avoid configuration when possible, resulting in time saving and enhanced productivity. In a study by IBM, Rails applications needed a fraction of the configuration code of Java counterparts, often by a factor of ten or more.¹ Where the programmer must specify configuration, Rails usually relies on Ruby programming language to provide configuration. The strategy saves developers many lines of code and simplifies the code that does need to be written. By taking mundane but essential decisions away from the developer, productivity increases substantially because more time and attention is spent satisfying the customer's requirements rather than the technical plumbing that can burden most projects.

Ruby on Rails is known for its ability to build Web applications quickly and with ease. For first-time users of Java, it could take about five to ten days to build a moderately useful Web application that will communicate with a database using accepted Java Web best-practices such as separating business logic, from display logic (commonly referred to as Model-View-Controller). With no prior training on Ruby on Rails, it takes about one day to accomplish the same goal using the Ruby programming language. In several more days, it is possible to build a relatively complete Web application with Ruby on Rails.

In Java, a developer has countless decisions to make about how to proceed when communicating with a database. Should I use JDBC? Should I use an Object-Relational-Mapping (ORM) library, and, if I use an ORM, which one should I choose? TopLink? Hibernate? JDO? Do I need to use EJB2 or EJB3? Rails has an ORM database layer built into its framework called ActiveRecord. Another useful feature of Rails is scaffolding -- Similar to how a building under construction uses scaffolding to assist in the construction of the final structure, Rails can generate code called scaffolding that can be used to quickly put up functional Web pages that talk to a database and allow you to add, delete and change information quickly and with very little coding. As previously mentioned, in other languages you have to select naming conventions and define the general structure of the file system, while Rails utilizes conventions and the Ruby programming language so that all of that is provided for you. Managers will appreciate the fact that Rails minimizes configuration and encourages standardization. This feature enables programming skills to be more portable. Rails developers can move from one project to another with ease, since standards common to all development projects, such as naming conventions, directory structures, unit-test frameworks, and interface templates, are already decided, with working samples always available.

Another feature of Ruby on Rails that enhances developer productivity is the rapid feedback loop. The feedback loop is the amount of time between making a change in code and seeing the results in the execution of your application on the screen. In Rails, you get nearly-instant feedback as you code. There is no compile or packaging phase needed. You can immediately load a browser page to see the results of your changes. Managers should take note of this feature, because with enhanced productivity comes improved client satisfaction. Say you are in a meeting with a client, and they have some edits that they would like for you to incorporate into their Web application. With Ruby on Rails, you can make changes promptly and see the results immediately, improving the overall client experience.

It is important to note that introducing a radically different framework such as Ruby on Rails can be detrimental to a company's development, testing, and production infrastructure. For example, Rails applications are installed differently than common development platforms such as Java or Microsoft's .NET. Operations managers need to understand how to deploy it effectively.

But Rails acceptance is already being witnessed in large companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Apple, and Sun Microsystems. Sun Microsystems supports a project called JRuby that enables Ruby applications to run in a Java Virtual Machine. Efforts like JRuby will make it easier for companies to transition and adapt to Ruby on Rails since it will become a part of a familiar structure. Apple Computer has announced that Ruby on Rails will be included in the next release of its flagship operating system, OS X 10.5 (Leopard). And, even Microsoft has included Ruby programming language support in its newest rich-Internet framework, Silverlight. The world's largest technical publisher, O'Reilly Media, has even acknowledged Ruby's rapid growth and now considers it a major language with triple digit growth between 2006 to 2007. (http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/oreilly/radar/atom/~3/117292190/state_of_the_co_10.html)

A common question regarding Ruby on Rails relates to its performance relative to its peers. Some companies claim that Ruby on Rails does not perform as well as comparable systems. Comments such as these must be looked at objectively and balanced against productivity gains. Managers then need to make the decision of whether it is cheaper to hire people or purchase additional hardware, and chances are they will find that purchasing more hardware makes better financial sense.

Conclusion

People are paying more and more attention to Ruby on Rails, and for good reason. With the advent of the Rails framework, the Ruby programming language is making its way towards the top. By focusing on convention over configuration, Ruby on Rails is lowering the barriers of entry to programming and positively impacting employee productivity-ultimately proving that all of the hype is true and well-deserved.

Building Desktop Applications in PHP

2011-05-10T00:13:00.000-07:00

Introduction

So, you’re a hotshot PHP developer. You’ve written a lot of code
powering some pretty cool websites; maybe you’ve even written some
public / open source scripts that other developers are using. You’ve
been through it all with the web, from basic database hacks to battling
with inconsistent browser rendering, and now you want to have a go at
something different.

Of course, the standard destination would
be desktop application development. But how can you get into desktop
application development without leaving behind all your existing PHP
skills? In this article, I’ll examine the techniques and systems you
can use to build desktop applications, from GTK libraries to native
Windows API calls.

Fundamentals

Now, desktop application development is an entirely different cup of
tea. It’s not what you’re used to: you’re used to being input-driven,
but desktop apps are event driven (Delphi for PHP
is the best of both worlds). As a result, before you start developing
desktop applications, you’ll have to step back for a moment and examine
the differences.

As a web developer, you’re familiar with the
basics of web scripting. Client makes request to server, server runs
your PHP code through PHP compiler/interpreter, output is sent to
client etc. etc. Your entire request has finished very quickly;
possibly in less than a second. The user didn’t do anything in between;
the data for the request (cookie data, get / post values, server and
environment variables etc.) was all set once before your code was run.
When executing your script, PHP went from top to bottom, ending at the
last line of code in your PHP file. Once it’s finished, the request is
gone; the process finished, possibly even the thread killed.

Desktop
applications, on the other hand, are nothing like this. Now that we
have full-on JS-heavy web applications, you should have a basic
understanding of how desktop application development works – think of
it like a web application written entirely in JavaScript. It’s heavily
event driven, with functions for different events such as a button
click or a mouse move, and it keeps going without executing any code.
In desktop applications, you first draw the window using some basic UI
code, and then wait – just wait. You have to give up a bit of control
to the operating system – for example, if you want a menu, you
(typically) tell the operating system to draw a menu and to bind some
of your functions to the menu items, then let it take care of the rest.
It takes quite a while to get used to, but soon enough you’ll get the
hang of it, and be building fantastic desktop applications in no time.

Of
course, as your applications are written in PHP, you can also reuse all
your existing PHP code – well, almost all (HTML output won’t exactly
help). As a result, once you understand the basics of desktop
development, you can be building powerful desktop applications in no
time – you could even integrate with your existing web application!

Benefits of desktop development

There are a number of benefits to desktop development, from
technical advantages to fundamental benefits. Here are some reasons why
you should be developing desktop applications.

Technical advantages

There
are a number of basic technical advantages to desktop-based
applications. They can interact with the local filesystem, allowing
settings to be saved on the user’s computer, files to be retrieved and
manipulated, databases to be stored and so on. They generally integrate
with the GUI toolkit of the operating system, providing a UI style that
the user is familiar with – users are still getting used to the web
application interfaces of our web 2.0 applications. And finally, they
use consistent interfaces, unlike the hope-for-the-best approach to
writing HTML, allowing for complex UI elements.

Fundamental advantages

However,
perhaps most importantly, they are geared to user-driven applications,
especially where the user has content to share. Web applications can
easily bring users together, for effective sharing of information.
Desktop applications, on the other hand, can easily work with the user
and manage information, especially when there is no need to share that
information.

Gaming is an excellent example; interface and
graphics issues aside, games are built around the user, and as a result
work very well on the desktop. Image editing is another; despite the
availability of online Photoshop alternatives, everything at the higher
end of image editing is still squarely on the desktop. Sure, there’s
Flickr, but Flickr is more geared towards the sharing of photos and
basic editing.

As a result, if you’re considering building an
application that fits into one of these categories, and you’ve
currently got a web application in mind, a desktop application is
definitely worth considering.

Building desktop applications in PHP

To demonstrate basic application development in PHP, we’ll take a
look at the PHP-GTK extension. PHP-GTK offers GTK bindings for PHP,
allowing you to build scripts that create windows using the GTK
graphics toolkit.

The desktop approach

As you can
imagine, building a desktop application when coming from a web
background is a whole new ballgame. Consider that, when you run a PHP
script on the web, it goes from top to bottom. When you run a desktop
application, you open it, and wait. And wait. And wait. It doesn’t
matter how long you wait for – you are waiting, and the application is
not doing anything. Of course, the moment you click a button or open a
menu, it springs into action again. At what point in the execution of a
standard PHP script is absolutely nothing happening? (Besides in sleep()) .

Now,
the only real way to achieve this in PHP is an infinite loop, with a
check for some sort of change or input on every iteration. Which is
exactly how the various most of the PHP-desktop systems available
function. Of course, it would be impractical for you to code this loop
manually, as there’s a lot of code all over the place. Instead, you
tell the interface system to draw your interface and bind your
functions/methods to the interface elements. Drawing your interface
involves telling it what interface elements to create – such as buttons
and input boxes – and where to put them. Binding allows you to link
your functions/methods to certain events for these elements. For
example, you could create a button, and have one of your functions
called when the button is clicked.

That’s where the
fundamentals end and the various differences in systems come into play.
So, let’s take a look at some code to create a basic desktop
application.

PHP-GTK

PHP-GTK is one of the standard
approaches for creating desktop-based PHP applications. As it only
requires GTK for interface bindings, it’s cross-platform – you can
write your application on a Mac, test it on a Linux machine and deploy
it to a Windows box, and with no code adjustments it will look (almost)
exactly the same on each.

Before continuing, if you want to try out the code samples, you’ll need a copy of PHP-GTK. You can download it from gtk.php.net;
there are windows binaries, but for everything else you may have to use
CVS. Installation instructions are available on the download page; you
might find these instructions for Ubuntu useful as well.

Now, let’s take a look at a basic PHP-GTK script from the manual. Here’s the full code:

<?php// Code snippet from the PHP-GTK manual.if (!class_exists('gtk')) die("Please load the php-gtk2 module in your php.ini");

$window = new GtkWindow();$window->set_title('Our PHP-GTK window');$window->connect_simple('destroy', array('gtk', 'main_quit'));

$label1 = new GtkLabel("Hello world!");$window->add($label1);

$window->show_all();Gtk::main();?>

As you can see, it’s perfectly normal PHP code. However, it’s relatively short; it ends with a call to this mysterious Gtk::main().
Remember that infinite loop I mentioned? When you finish creating your
window and drawing it, your scripts hand over to the GTK library that
handles that same loop. Still, it’s new territory, so let’s step
through the code and review it.

if (!class_exists('gtk')) die("Please load the php-gtk2 module in your php.ini");

Pretty
standard stuff: we check that the ‘gtk’ class is available. Without it,
you won’t be able to render your windows with the GTK toolkit. As PHP
isn’t really designed for desktop applications, there is still the
potential for deployment quirks such as lack of the GTK module, so we
carefully check it here.

$wnd = new GtkWindow();$wnd->set_title('Our PHP-GTK window');

The GtkWindow
class is, as it’s name suggest, a GTK window. Working with GTK in PHP
is heavily object oriented; you’ll have objects for your windows, the
interface elements on those windows, GTK itself and more. The set_title() method sets the title, similar to using a <title> tag in HTML, with the exception that what really goes in the title bar is no longer at the mercy of the end-user environment.

$window->connect_simple('destroy', array('gtk', 'main_quit'));

This
is where we start binding to the interface. When the user clicks the
close button on our application, it doesn’t just magically clean up
after itself and quit. The operating system can’t simply kill our
application; chances are we want to tie up some loose ends and clear
out data we’ve stored. As a result, we have to link the ‘destroy’
signal to the gtk::main_quit() method. This method essentially ends our application so that we can cleanly exit.

$label1 = new GtkLabel("Hello world!");$window->add($label1);

Now
we start creating our interface. We’ll start with a simple label. In
desktop applications, if you want to cleanly position text (and you do,
as opposed to running it all from the top-left corner of the form) it
needs to be in some sort of container, and a label is the common term
for a basic text container in a window.

You can position your
label, give it some additional properties and so on, but for now we’ll
just give it the text "Hello world!". By calling the add() method of our GtkWindow object $window,
we tell GTK to put our new label on our window. Without this, the label
can’t really appear anywhere. Interestingly, this approach of not
scoping an interface element within a particular form makes element
reuse simple and effective.

$window->show_all();Gtk::main();

This is the interesting part. First of all, our window won’t actually appear until we call the show_all()
method on our window’s object. This call tells GTK to show the window
on the screen. However, that infinite loop I mentioned before? Now that
we’ve finished drawing our window, we’re ready to roll. We call Gtk::main(), and away we go…

Your first PHP-GTK application!

If you’re trying to run this application, I presume you’re running it from
the command line with PHP-CLI. To check that everything’s in order,
click the ‘x’ button in the top-right. Your PHP-GTK application should
close, and your console window should indicate that the program has
finished and take you back to the prompt.

With PHP-GTK, you
have all the power of the GTK toolkit, allowing you to create complex
interfaces and high-end applications. Check out the PHP-GTK manual for some more complex tutorials. There are also some good tutorials elsewhere online.

Top Electric Cars Launching in India

2011-04-27T01:34:00.000-07:00

Electric car is an alternate fuel automobile that uses electricity instead of petrol or diesel. These automobiles have electric motors and controllers used for propulsion. These vehicles do not use the traditional or the common methods of propulsion like ICE (internal combustion engine). These cars are energy efficient and are capable of reducing city pollution because of the zero tail pipe emission.
On-board battery packs are the main power supply to the car. The functioning of the cars greatly depends on the quality of the battery used in the car. The poor battery may result into long hours of recharging and poor speed with poor acceleration. These cars are not practically suitable for long journey but can be a good transportation vehicle for everyday use and can be recharged overnight.

Hyundai i10 Electric The new electric version of i10 is termed as zero-emission urban commuter consisting a 16kWh battery and a 49kWh electrical motor. The batteries incorporate Li-Poly batteries that are capable to produce equaling power as compared to NiMH batteries. The advantage of Li-Poly batteries over the NiMH batteries is that, Li-poly weighs much lesser than that of NiMH. Recharging the batteries from 220V outlet will take up to 5 hours whereas recharging from a 413V outlet will take only 15 minutes to complete 85% of the charge. You can drive up to 160 km with the top speed of 130 kmph.

General Motors - Chevrolet Electric Spark / Chevrolet E-Spark Chevrolet Beat is the latest launch of General Motors. General displayed 11 concept vehicles at Auto Expo. Out of the three themes, 'Chevrolet Hot Hatch’ was the one which had everyone’s attention and all eyes on it. The category highlighted three hatchback cars Chevrolet Spark, Beat and Aveo U-VA. The Electric Spark will run on an all-electric drive train while the Volt will save an estimated 1,892 liters of petrol every year if driven for 64kms every day.

General Motors - Chevrolet Volt Chevrolet Volt is an electric car that is capable of creating its own electricity. Once it is charged completely, it is ready to run on electric charge for up to a range of 40 miles i.e. 64.374 km. After that, Volt keeps going, even if you can't plug it in. Volt uses a range-extending gas generator that produces enough energy to power it for hundreds of miles on a single tank of gas.

Toyota Prius The second hybrid car launched at Auto Expo that will be available in Indian market is Toyota Prius. The Prius was launched in 2009 in the international market. The design is more aerodynamic if compared to the previous version of it. The coefficient of drag reduced to 0.25 Cd, The 1.8-liter petrol engine generates about 100PS and with the added power of the electric motor, combined power is 136PS. The Prius engine, with an electric water pump, is the first production engine that requires no accessory belts improving fuel economy.

Reva NXR and NXG The REVA Electric Car company is the leader in the electric car producer and is ready to launch two new and improved electric car version namely REVA NXR and REVA NXG. Unlike the previous electric car REVA, which was two seater , small and compact car, the NXR is a three door, four seater and much spacious model. It can accelerate to a maximum speed of 105 km/h with a range of 160 kilometers on a single charge of its lithium-ion battery pack. The new models are coming up with improved charging that might result in 15-minute faster recharge as compared to the older version. However, it might take up to 8 hours to completely recharge the battery packs from a regular household outlet.

Programming Language Market Share (Java vs php vs ruby) (POPULARITY OF PROGRAMMING LAGUAGES)

2011-04-25T22:15:00.000-07:00

source: www.zacker.org

Popular programming language ACCORDING TO MARKET SHARE......(%):

1. JAVA

2. PHP

3.PERL

4. C#

5. PYTHON

6. RUBY

PHP vs Java vs Ruby

2011-04-25T22:05:00.000-07:00

This week, a lot of focus is on the other open frameworks that have risen during the same era, and their comparative value in a post open source Java world. One such take is from well-known Sun insider, Tim Bray, who spoke at last week's International PHP Conference in Germany.

Bray, who is Director of Web Technologies at Sun Microsystems, co-creator of theXML 1.0 and XML Namespace standards, co-founder of Open-Text, and contributor to the Atom Publishing standard (whew!) spoke in a presentation entitled “How to combine PHP technology with Java based on Enterprise Systems” .

In the slide below, Bray outlines the basic advantages of each of these three platforms (or rather the two languages and one framework if you are scoring at home). In perhaps in a nod to his new employer, Sun, Bray totally omits any mention of .NET or smaller products like Adobe's Flex/ColdFusion platform.

His idea, if you are able to take it on the surface only, is to rate your priorities of: 1) Scalability, 2) Dev Speed, 3) Dev Tools, and 4) Maintainability. In this highly generalized approach, you could theoretically pick your web application building language/framework based on only these priorities.

Tim weighs-in heavy on the maintainability side, and we'd tend to agree with him. To quote:

“Good apps, once built, tend to be in production for an astonishingly long time. Which means that they have to be maintained for an astonishingly long time. Which means that maintainability is important. There are a lot of things that go into maintainability, but I suggest that the biggies are object-orientation, MVCarchitecture, code readability, and code size.”

On the maintainability side Tim places Ruby on Rails out front. Quoting him again, Tim describes why RoR is in the lead here.

“Mostly because there's less code. The fact that Ruby forces MVC on you helps too, also the fact that the templating and [Object Relational Mapping (ORM)] and testing and application code are all so tightly integrated helps. Bear in mind that we still don't know how well Rails is going to work outside of the CRUD-centered greenfield app space where it shines.”

Tim's metrics don't really exist on a quantitative level nor are they based on any published statistics — just a very informed intellect and a privileged position. Obviously, additional parameters such as total cost of ownership and native security (PHP, we are looking at you) should also play a big role the decision making process.

As you can probably guess, in response to this presentation, the proponents of Java,PHP and Ruby are lighting the Internet aflame in defense of their platform of choice and at the same time nay-saying their fellow players. While very entertaining and sometimes educational to follow, not much is going to be gained from this bickering.

Bray concludes the presentation with the Rodney King-esque statement “One way or another we all have to integrate.”

The reality is that there are a great number of ways to hone-in on the language or framework choice for a web application. Many factors have to be considered and weighed against each other. The beauty of what we have today is that there ARE a great many choices out there, much more-so than even a few years ago.

The fact that open source options are being stacked up against the likes of Java and .NET, and have a similar levels of support is a blessing. Today, with the open-sourcing of Java, we have a new entry onto the field. Rather than exclude one or another, this arrival is going to make the open source web world, warmer, more sophisticated, and for better or worse, a little sunnier.

Ruby for the Java world

2011-04-25T22:02:00.000-07:00

Ever since the invention of the computer, software development has been trending towards higher-level languages. From assembly language, to C, to C++, to Java, each step up has met with the same criticisms from the old guard: it's slow; it's buggy; developers don't want to lose control. But gradually, as hardware has sped up, and new research and development has improved compilers, interpreters, and virtual machines, developers have inevitably migrated to the higher level, enhancing their productivity by freeing themselves from lower-level concerns

Java now holds the lead in many areas of software development, but dynamic languages threaten to bypass it in this inexorable climb. Languages such as Python, Perl, Rexx, Groovy, TCL, and Ruby have been doing yeoman service in specialized domains such as file processing, test automation, software builds, glue code, and Web GUIs for years—hence, their historic name "scripting languages." But in the last few years, they have been making headway in the heavy-duty jobs once reserved mostly for C++, Java, and other compiled languages.

In the last year, the Ruby on Rails (RoR) Web framework has given Ruby a big boost. RoR builds definitions for all tiers of a typical Web application—GUI, business logic, and persistence—from simple Ruby code, thereby minimizing redundancy, boilerplate code, source-code generation, and configuration. RoR's ease of use showcases the Ruby language; and Ruby, a full-fledged software language, has much more to offer than RoR.

As a long-time Java developer, I am likely to stick with Java for some time to come. But I keep my eye on other languages that can play a role in my Java-based systems, and Ruby has recently emerged as a particularly good candidate. With the help of the JRuby interpreter, Ruby works well with Java, configuring, integrating, and reusing Java software (more on that below). And simply learning Ruby has improved my Java code. Ruby lets me easily accomplish techniques such as functional programming and metaprogramming, which in Java I can only do with difficulty. Learning these techniques in Ruby has helped me better appreciate when and how to use them in Java development.

With this article, I hope to share with you some of my excitement about what Ruby can do for my Java-based systems. I compare the strengths and weaknesses of both Java and Ruby, and present the pros and cons of the JRuby interpreter. I also show where to best draw the dividing line between Java and Ruby to benefit from each. I illustrate these points with code samples and present a messaging example that shows how to integrate Java systems with Ruby, putting to good use the flexibility, expressiveness, and power of a dynamic metaprogrammable language.

Ruby vs. Java

This article explains Ruby from the Java developer's viewpoint, focusing on a comparison between the two languages. Like Java, Ruby is a full-featured object-oriented language. But there are many significant differences. Ruby is dynamically typed and runs in a source-code interpreter, and it conveniently supports metaprogramming as well as the procedural and functional paradigms. I won't go into details of Ruby syntax, since that subject has been covered extensively elsewhere.

Dynamic typing

Java has static typing. You declare the type of each variable, and then, during compilation, you get an error message if you use a variable of the wrong type. Ruby, on the other hand, has dynamic typing: You don't declare types for variables or functions, and no type-check occurs until runtime, when you get an error if you call a method that doesn't exist. Even then, Ruby doesn't care about an object's class, just whether it has a method of the name used in the method call. For this reason, the dynamic approach has earned the name duck typing: "If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck."

Listing 1. Duck typing

 class ADuck
    def quack()
        puts "quack A";end

en
d

class BDuck
    def quack()
        puts "quack B";end

en
d

# quack_it doesn't care about the type of the argument duck, as long# as it has a method called quack. Classes A and B have no
ck
end# inheritance relationship.
def quack_it(duck)
    duck.qu
a

a = ADuck.newb = BDuck.new
ack_it(b)quack_it(a)
q
u

Java also lets you achieve dynamic typing, using reflection, but this clumsy and verbose workaround produces confusing exceptions like NoSuchMethodError and InvocationTargetException; in practice, these exceptions tend to pop up in reflective Java code far more often than the equivalents in Ruby.

Even in nonreflective Java code, you often lose static type information. For example, execute() methods in the Command design pattern must return Object rather than a specific type in pre-Java 5 code, resulting in ClassCastExceptions. Likewise, when signatures change between compile-time and runtime, runtime Errors ensue. In practice, whether in Java or Ruby, such errors rarely cause severe field bugs. A strong unit test suite—which you need anyway!—generally catches them in time.

Ruby's dynamic typing means you don't repeat yourself: How often in Java have you had to suffer through verbose code along the lines of XMLPersistence xmlPersistence = (XMLPersistence)persistenceManager.getPersistence();? Ruby eliminates the need for the type declaration and casting (as well as parentheses and semicolon): a typical Ruby equivalent would be xmlPersistence = persistence_manager.persistence.

Ruby's dynamic typing does not mean weak typing—Ruby always requires you to pass objects of the correct type. Java, in fact, enforces types more weakly than Ruby. For example, Java evaluates "4" + 2 as "42", coercing the integer to a string, while Ruby throws a TypeError, telling you it "can't convert Fixnum into String." Likewise, Java, sacrificing correctness for speed, can silently overflow an integer operation, producing weirdness such as Integer.MAX_VALUE + 1, which equalsInteger.MIN_VALUE, while Ruby simply expands integers as needed.

Despite Ruby's advantages, Java's static typing does give it one ability that leaves it as the preferred choice for large-scale projects: Java tools understand code at development-time. IDEs can trace dependencies between classes, find usages of methods and classes, auto-complete identifiers, and help you refactor code. Though parallel Ruby tools exist with limited functionality, they lack type information and so cannot perform all these tasks.

Interpreted language

Ruby runs in an interpreter, so you can test code without a distracting wait from the compiler; you can even run Ruby interactively, executing each line as you type it. Besides the fast feedback, interpreted languages have a rarely noted advantage in dealing with field bugs. With compiled languages, to analyze the code causing a field bug, the field engineer must determine the deployed application's exact build version and then look up the code in the source-code configuration management system. In real life, often this is simply impossible. With interpreted languages, on the other hand, the source code is immediately available for analysis and even, when necessary, for emergency on-the-spot fixes.

Interpreted languages have an unfortunate reputation for slowness. Compare the history of Java, a "semi-compiled" language: In the early years, the JVM always interpreted the bytecode at runtime, which contributed to Java's reputation for slowness. Yet Java developers quickly learned that most applications spend most of their time waiting on the user or network I/O and the remaining bottlenecks are best optimized in higher-level algorithms, rather than in raw low-level tweaks. Over the years, Java rapidly gained speed; for example, just-in-time compilers with optimization based on dynamic analysis sometimes allow Java to outdo C++, which is limited to optimization based on static compile-time analysis.

Already, for most applications, Ruby is no slower than other languages. In the near future, Ruby will get a further boost as Ruby's native interpreter moves to a bytecode-based system and the JVM JRuby interpreter gains the ability to compile Ruby to Java bytecode. Eventually, any performance lag will gradually become negligible for most functionality.

Functional programming

Ruby supports multiple programming paradigms with equal ease. In addition to its pure object-oriented style (even integers and the like are objects), it also supports a procedural style suited to one-off scripts: you can write code outside any class or function, as well as functions outside any class. (Ruby silently adds these functions to the Object class, maintaining the object-orientation behind the scenes.)

Most interestingly, for Java programmers looking for new and useful perspectives, Ruby supports the functional paradigm. You can use most functional programming constructs in Java, with some support from libraries such as Jakarta Commons Collections, but the syntax is clumsier. (See "Functional Programming in the Java Language" by Abhijit Belapurkar and Jakarta Commons Collections in Resources.) Ruby, though not a purely functional language, treats functions and anonymous blocks of code as full citizens of the language, which can be passed around and manipulated like any ordinary objects.

In Java, you often iterate over a collection's Iterator, running the logic on each element. But the iteration is just an implementation detail: in general, you are just trying to apply the same logic to each element of a collection. In Ruby, you pass a code block to a method that does just that, iterating behind the scenes. For example, [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].each{|n| print n*n, " "} prints the string 1 4 9 16 25; an iterator takes each element of the list and passes it into the code block as the variable n.

Functional programming is useful in wrapping code blocks with instructions to be executed before and after the block. For example, in Java, you can use the Command design pattern to ensure the opening and closing of a file, database transaction, or other resource. This burdens the code with the useless overhead of an anonymous inner class and callback method; in addition, there is the distracting rule that variables passed into the anonymous Command class must be declaredfinal. And to ensure that logic always executes at the end of a code block, the whole thing must be wrapped withtry{...}finally{...}.

In Ruby, you can wrap any function or code block, with no need for anonymous classes or method definitions. In Listing 2, the file opens, then closes after the write() method. No code is needed beyond the transaction() method and the code block.

Listing 2. Wrap a code block

 File.open("out.txt", "a") {|f|
    f.write("Hello")

}

Metaprogrammable language

You generally define your Java classes as source code, but you can also manipulate class definitions at runtime. This requires advanced techniques such as bytecode enhancement during class-loading. Hibernate, for example, inserts data-access logic directly into the business objects' bytecode, saving the application programmer from coding the extra data-access layer. But class manipulation, called metaprogramming, is practical only for infrastructure programmers: application programmers cannot usefully introduce these tricky and fragile techniques.

Even at development time, Java limits the developers' ability to change classes. To add an isBlank() method that tells you if a String is all white space, you'd have to add a StringUtils class with the static method (as Apache Commons does); logically, the new method belongs in String.

In Ruby, on the other hand, you can simply extend the built-in String class with a blank? method. In fact, because in Ruby everything is an object, you could even augment the Fixnum class, the equivalent of Java's primitive int, as shown in Listing 3.

Listing 3. Add method to built-in classes String and Fixnum

 class String
    # Returns true if string is all white space.
    # The question mark indicates a Boolean return value.def blank?()
        !(self = /\S/)
    end

en
d

class Fixnum
# Returns 0 or 1 which in Ruby are treated as false and true respectively.def odd?()
    return self % 2
    end

en
d

puts " ".blank? # true
# The next line evaluates if-then similarly to Java's ternary operator ?:
puts (if 23.odd? then "23 odd" else "23 even" end)

JRuby: Ruby in a Java world

As a Java programmer, you won't want to use Ruby in production until you can get it to interact with existing Java applications and libraries, which hold within them a tremendous variety of essential functionality. JRuby, an open source Ruby interpreter for the JVM, simplifies Ruby-Java integration. You can call Java libraries from Ruby, script Java applications with an embedded interpreter, or even use Ruby libraries from Java. Exactly the same Ruby code runs in JRuby and the standard Ruby interpreter, except where Ruby code calls into native (C-coded) or Java libraries.

The JVM is often contrasted with .Net's multilanguage Common Language Runtime as supporting only a single language. But in fact, the JVM executes not only Java, but also Python, JavaScript, Groovy, Scheme, and many other languages, which means that where necessary, Ruby code can interact with these languages as well

As of mid-July 2006, JRuby remains in prerelease mode (version 0.9). But it's catching up rapidly: a team of volunteers has released five versions since January 2005. JRuby's maturity is continually evaluated with a test suite that calibrates it against the standard interpreter, and it now passes more than 90 percent of the tests plus provides basic support for Ruby on Rails.

To try JRuby, be sure that Java SE 5 is installed and that JAVA_HOME is set. (Java Runtime Environment 1.4 was supported in JRuby 0.8.3 and below; it will be supported from the next patch release after 0.9.) Download the compressed file from the project's page and uncompress it. Set the JRUBY_HOME environment variable to the JRuby base directory. You can experiment interactively with jirb in the bin directory. For most purposes, you'll use the jruby interpreter—create a file and pass its name as a parameter to the jruby batch/shell script in directory bin.

In addition to running ordinary Ruby code, you can also use JRuby to construct Java objects, call Java methods, and inherit from Java classes. A Ruby class can even implement Java interfaces—necessary for statically calling Ruby methods from Java.

To initialize the libraries used for accessing Java from Ruby, start with require "java". Then specify the Java classes to use with the include_class method, for example, include_class "javax.jms.Session". You can include an entire Java package into a Ruby module with include_package. Like Java's wildcard package-import statement, it's advisable to avoid the namespace pollution of include_package; in JRuby, there is the additional penalty of a performance hit as the interpreter searches all packages for the desired class. Stick to include_class where possible.

The names of many Java standard classes overlap with the names of Ruby classes. To resolve collisions, pass a code block into the include_class function, returning a new name for the Java class, and JRuby will use this as an alias (see Listing 4).

Listing 4. Include a Java class with clashing name

 require "java"
# The next line exposes Java's String as JString
include_class("java.lang.String") { |pkg, name| "J" + name }
s = JString.new("f")

Alternatively, you can create a Ruby module that includes the Java class definitions, but in a separate namespace. For example:

Listing 5. Java module importing multiple Java classes

 require "java"
module JavaLang
    include_package "java.lang"
end

s = JavaLang::String.new("a")

What's JRuby good for?

Dynamic languages like Ruby are most commonly used for specialized areas such as gluing other systems together; JRuby takes on this role in the Java world. For example, JRuby can pull data from one system, transform it and insert it into another. When the requirements change, modifying a JRuby script is as easy as changing a configuration file, thereby avoiding the complex compile-and-deploy cycle of Java integration code.

In addition to calling Java from Ruby, you can call Ruby from Java, making your application scriptable. With JRuby's minimal syntactic overhead, you can create an easy-to-use domain-specific language for users to work with For example, a gaming engine's scripting system can present Ruby classes describing characters, vehicles, and other game entities.

Moreover, with Ruby's dynamism, users can change definitions of scriptable classes. The Ruby objects allow direct method access to state and behavior. With Java, on the other hand, you typically pass around a Map with user-configurable keys, lacking the full functionality of objects.

A Ruby script is like a souped-up configuration file. Configuration for Java applications typically comes in an XML or properties file, but these are limited only to parameters decided on at development time. With a Ruby script fed to your scripting system either from a text file or from an embedded editor, the user can freely customize behavior wherever you choose to place a scripting hook. In this way, Ruby combines configuration with behavior, providing the functionality of Java plug-in APIs, but without a Java IDE or a compiler, and sparing the additional steps of building and deploying jar files.

For example, a user-provided script can hook into an application's management events to filter for certain suspicious conditions, then send a notification to a system administrator and log into a special security-issues database, or a start-up script can purge old files and reinitialize custom datastores. Likewise, many rich clients allow users to change the position of menus and toolbars—with a JRuby hook, a user's new menu items trigger any behavior the user wants.

For convenience in scripting Java applications, the Bean Scripting Framework (BSF) provides a standard interface between the JVM and multiple dynamic languages, including Ruby, Python, BeanShell, Groovy, and JavaScript; Java Specification Request (JSR) 223, the successor of BSF, will be a standard part of Java 6. The Java code can send variables into the JRuby namespace; JRuby can manipulate these Java objects directly or return a value back to Java. With the BSF and JSR 223, the syntax for interoperation between Java and any scripting language is the same. Listing 6 shows a basic example of BSF use with Ruby, and the full code is in the online samples under the directory bsf_example. Note that BSF does not include JRuby support out of the package; but simple instructions for adding it are available in the JRuby documentation.

Listing 6. Embed a Ruby interpreter

 ...
// JRuby must be registered in BSF.
// jruby.jar and bsf.jar must be on classpath.BSFManager.registerScriptingEngine("ruby",
,  new String[]{"rb"});
BSFManager manager = new BSFManager();
// "org.jruby.javasupport.bsf.JRubyEngine
"Make the variable myUrl available from Ruby.
ww/jruby.org"), URL.class);
// Note that the Method getDefaultPort is avamanager.declareBean("myUrl", new URL("http://
wilable from Ruby
// as getDefaultPort and also as defaultPort.

// and a Java method call.
String result = (String) manager.eva// The following line illustrates the combination of Ruby synta
xl(
    "ruby", "(java)", 1, 1, "if $myUrl.defaultPort< 1024 then " +
    "'System port' else 'User port' end");

..
.

It is also possible to instantiate a JRuby interpreter directly from Java, but as this ties your Java code to Ruby-specific Java wrapper classes, it's best to stick with BSF/JSR 223. (An upcoming release of JRuby will also allow direct embedding of the interpreter with cleaner encapsulation of Ruby objects, without the need for BSF or JSR 223.)

Limitations

It's important to remember that JRuby is still in prerelease mode and still has some limitations, which will be fixed before the 1.0 release.

In particular, a Ruby class can't extend abstract Java classes. Unfortunately, to get around this limitation, you can't simply create a concrete Java subclass, implementing abstract methods with dummy methods, which the Ruby class then extends. This is because of a second limitation in Ruby/Java inheritance in current prerelease versions of JRuby: Java code cannot polymorphically call a Ruby-coded method that overrides a (concrete) Java method.

The limitations make the use of Swing especially difficult. For example, it's impossible to extend AbstractTableModel to take advantage of the functionality that it adds to the TableModel interface. You can work around this by converting inheritance to delegation: Extend the abstract class with a concrete Java "shim" class that delegates to an object of interface type, where the interface includes all the abstract Java methods. A Ruby class implements the delegate interface. Though the wordiness of this approach obviates the usual advantages of JRuby, it does offer a workaround for this limitation and provides flexibility where it is needed: in the subclass functionality (see table_example in attached code listings).

Ruby comes with standard libraries that provide a wide range of functionality. Those that do not use native code are included in the JRuby release. The JRuby team is gradually porting most libraries, although some that are a thin layer over native code, like the GUI library Tk, will probably not be ported. Java's standard libraries, which are included, provide all necessary functionality.

JRuby now provides basic support for Ruby on Rails in the WEBrick Web server; the next major milestone is full support in any servlet container. RoR support will let programmers combine the ease of the Web framework with the vast array of existing Java libraries, while also validating JRuby as an alternative Ruby interpreter.

Java SE 5 is required for JRuby 0.9 because of a bug, but JRE 1.4 will be supported in the next release.

The JRuby team has so far prioritized correctness over performance; optimization is a top priority for the 0.9.x releases.

Example

The example jms_example.rb illustrates the use of JRuby at greater length. It shows how to transform messages from one class structure to another, simulating software that integrates two differently defined distributed game engines. The code uses advanced functional and metaprogramming techniques to transform XML messages of any type as Ruby objects. Comments in the code walk you through the logic.

Achieving this level of configurability in Java is nearly impossible; at best, users can plug in compiled code. But in Ruby, the dynamic code is as natural and easy to use as any statically defined code.

Ruby and the future of Java

Ruby has a lot to teach Java programmers. The Ruby on Rails framework shows how simple it can be to develop a Web application; with JRuby, RoR will soon be able to reuse existing Java functionality. JRuby is set to join Jython, JavaScript, and other dynamic languages in the scripting of Java applications. Developers who want to keep their skills up to date should learn dynamic languages, which are likely to take over more and more domains in application development. Even when not using dynamic languages, Java developers can benefit from the insights Ruby gives into concepts like functional programming and metaprogramming.

To Ruby From Java

2011-04-25T21:58:00.000-07:00

Java is mature. It’s tested. And it’s fast (contrary to what the anti-Java crowd may still claim). It’s also quite verbose. Going from Java to Ruby, expect your code size to shrink down considerably. You can also expect it to take less time to knock together quick prototypes.

Similarities

As with Java, in Ruby,...

Memory is managed for you via a garbage collector.
Objects are strongly typed.
There are public, private, and protected methods.
There are embedded doc tools (Ruby’s is called RDoc). The docs generated by rdoc look very similar to those generated by javadoc.

Differences

Unlike Java, in Ruby,...

You don’t need to compile your code. You just run it directly.
There are several different popular third-party GUI toolkits. Ruby users can try WxRuby, FXRuby, Ruby-GNOME2, or the bundled-in Ruby Tk for example.
You use the end keyword after defining things like classes, instead of having to put braces around blocks of code.
You have require instead of import.
All member variables are private. From the outside, you access everything via methods.
Parentheses in method calls are usually optional and often omitted.
Everything is an object, including numbers like 2 and 3.14159.
There’s no static type checking.
Variable names are just labels. They don’t have a type associated with them.
There are no type declarations. You just assign to new variable names as-needed and they just “spring up” (i.e. a = [1,2,3]rather than int[] a = {1,2,3};).
There’s no casting. Just call the methods. Your unit tests should tell you before you even run the code if you’re going to see an exception.
It’s foo = Foo.new( "hi") instead of Foo foo = new Foo( "hi" ).
The constructor is always named “initialize” instead of the name of the class.
You have “mixin’s” instead of interfaces.
YAML tends to be favored over XML.
It’s nil instead of null.
== and equals() are handled differently in Ruby. Use == when you want to test equivalence in Ruby (equals() is Java). Use equal?()when you want to know if two objects are the same (== in Java).

Installing a Guest Operating System on a Virtual Machine

2011-04-19T21:27:00.000-07:00

Virtualization has been widely accepted as a technique to conserve resources. Virtualization is the process of running a guest operating system on a virtual machine, which is created in a virtualizer running on the host operating system. Large companies do not have to install 100 different host computers for its employees as they may create 100 different virtual machines running different guest operating systems on a single host computer.

VMware is one of the main vendors of Linux virtualization solutions. VMware Player may be used to run 32-bit and 64-bit Linux operating systems including openSUSE, RHEL 5, and Ubuntu. VMware also offers Virtual Appliances, which are prebuilt software solutions comprising of virtual machine/s. Virtual Appliances are available for Ubuntu, Red Hat and openSUSE, though an appliance for the latest versions may not be available. For the latest version of openSuse, 11.2, it is recommended to install the openSUSE directly onto the VMware Player. In this article we shall install Oracle database XE in openSuse 11.2 as a guest operating system running in a virtual machine (VM) on a Windows host operating system.

Using Oracle database XE with openSuse 11.2 in VMPlayer requires the following:

Install VMPlayer
Create a virtual machine and install openSUSE 11.2 on the VM
Install Oracle database in openSUSE 11.2
Add user to dba group
Create initialization initXE.ora file
Grant write access to intiXE.ora
Start database instance in NOMOUNT
Modify DB_NAME parameter
Restart database instance in NOMOUNT
Create database
Create database table
Create data dictionary views

Installing VMware Player
Create three folders - openSuse, vmplayer and VMs - for installing openSuse ISO, VMPlayer, and an openSuse virtual machine. First, we need to download the latest version of VMPlayer to the vmplayer folder. The VMPlayer is just an .exe file. Double-click on the .exe file and the VMware Player Setup Wizard gets started.

Click on Next in the Welcome window. Specify the Destination Folder (C:\vmplayer for example) to install the VMware Player. Click on Next. In the Ready to Perform the Requested Operations window click on Continue. The VMware installation gets started. When the installation is completed, the Setup Wizard prompts for restarting the system to complete the installation. Click on Restart Now. After the system has been restarted, the VMware Player installation is completed.

Creating a Virtual Machine
Next, download the openSUSE 11.2 Live KDE ISO (openSUSE-11.2-KDE4-LiveCD-i686.iso) to the openSuse folder. Open the VMware Player. Click on Create a New Virtual Machine to create an openSUSE 11.2 virtual machine as shown in Figure 1.

The New Virtual Machine Wizard gets started. Select the Installer disc image file (iso) radio button and select the openSUSE 11.2 KDE ISO file as shown in Figure 2. Click on Next.

Select a guest operating system as Linux and a version as OpenSUSE as in Figure 3. Click on Next.

Specify a name for the virtual machine and specify the Location of the VM as the VMs directory. Click on Next. Specify the disk size as 40.0 GB and select Split virtual disk into 2GB files as in Figure 4. Click on Next.

Select the memory allocated to the VM. By default one processor is configured. Configure the Network Adapter as Bridged with Replicate physical network connection state as in Figure 5.

Click on Finish to create the openSUSE 11.2 VM and start the installation.

Installing openSUSE 11.2 in the Virtual Machine
After the virtual machine gets created, select Installation in the OpenSUSE Installer boot screen as in Figure 6.

In the Welcome window the license agreement is displayed. Click on Next. Select Time Zone and click on Next. In the Suggested Partitioning window Partition Based is selected by default. Click on Edit Partition Setup. In the Expert Partitioner the Available Storage on Linux gets listed for the different partitions of the VMware type /dev/sda hard disk as in Figure 7. Click on Accept.

Click on Next as in Figure 8.

In the User Settings, create a new user with the Create New User wizard. Click Next. In Installation Settings, review the installation summary and click Install. In the Confirm Installation window click Install. The installation gets started.

After the installation is completed, the system needs to reboot as shown in Figure 9.

The initial booting of openSUSE 11.2 gets completed. Next, the automatic configuration of openSUSE 11.2 gets performed. The openSUSE 11.2 VM gets created and installed as shown in Figure 10.

Installing Oracle Database XE in openSUSE 11.2
Next, we install the Oracle database XE in the openSUSE 11.2 VM. To start the openSUSE 11.2 VM click on Play virtual machine. Select VM > Install VMWare Tools to install VMware Tools. In the openSUSE login window specify the Username and Password.

The VMPlayer Desktop is displayed, as shown in Figure 11.

Download the Oracle database XE for Linux. Start the Dolphin file manager. Select the Download folder. Right-click on the oracle-xe rpm and select Open with Install Software. Specify a password for the root user and click on OK. The Software Manager will start. Oracle Database 10g XE will be installed.

Adding a User to the dba Group
Next, we test the newly installed database by starting the database. First, start the application launcher. In the application launcher search for Oracle and start the database with Start Database. An error will be generated, "Operation failed. dvohra11 is not a member of ‘dba' group. We need to add the user dvohra11 to the ‘dba' group. In the application launcher select the command line Terminal Konsole. The openSUSE terminal will start the Bash shell. Log in to the openSUSE 11.2 with root privileges with the su command. Add user dvohra11 to the ‘dba' group with the following command as shown in Figure 12.

usermod -G dba dvohra11

Start the SQL Command line. Having added the user to the ‘dba' group, you will be able to connect as sys to an idle instance.

Creating an Initialization File initXE.ora
Before we create a database and a table, we need to create an initialization file from which the initialization parameters are read. For an ‘XE' SID we need an initXE.ora initialization file. We'll create the initXE.ora file by making a copy of the init.ora file in the directory /usr/lib/oracle/xe/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/server/dbs. In the bash shell cd to the //dbs directory. Create the initXE.ora file with the following command as shown in Figure 13.

cp init.ora initXE.ora

Next, grant write permissions to initXE.ora with the following command.

chmod g+w initXE.ora

Starting Database Instance in NOMOUNT
To create a database and a table start the database instance with the STARTUP command. Because control files are not yet available, an error will be generated indicating we need to start the instance in NOMOUNT. Start up the instance with the following command:

STARTUP NOMOUNT

The Oracle instance gets started.

Modifying DB_NAME Parameter
Next, we will create a database with the CREATE DATABASE command:

CREATE DATABASE ORAXE

An error is generated:

CREATE DATABASE failed
database name ‘ORAXE' does not match parameter db_name ‘DEFAULT'

We need to modify the static initialization parameter DB_NAME to the database name we want to create. Static parameters are modified with the ALTER SYSTEM command with scope set to ‘SPFILE'. Start the database in NOMOUNT and set the db_name parameter with the following command:

ALTER SYSTEM SET db_name='ORCLXE' scope=spfile

Static parameters require an instance restart when modified for the modification to take effect. Shut down the instance with the SHUTDOWN command as shown in Figure 14.

Restart the instance in NOMOUNT and verify that the DB_NAME parameter has been modified with the SHOW PARAMETER command.

Creating a Database
Having set the DB_NAME parameter to ORCLXE, create a database with the following command.

CREATE DATABASE ORCLEXE

The database gets created and mounted and opened as shown in Figure 15.

Creating a Database Table
Next, create a database table with the CREATE TABLE command. Shut down the instance with the SHUTDOWN command.

Creating Data Dictionary Views
We also need to create the data dictionary views with the following commands:

SQL> @?/rdbms/admin/catalog.sql
SQL> @?/rdbms/admin/catproc.sql

A VM may be shut down by selecting VM > Power > Power Off. As a best practice, don't shut down the VMPlayer without shutting down the VM. Similarly, multiple virtual machines may be added to the VMPlayer.

Facebook Turns Light Green, Open Sources Its Data Center

2011-04-19T21:23:00.000-07:00

Facebook has been quietly working on building an energy-efficient data center at the lowest possible cost for a year or two and Thursday it open sourced the infrastructure it created under what it calls the Open Compute Project, figuring that many eyes might improve on it.

"We are not the only ones who need the kind of hardware that we are building out," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said.

The company wasn't getting what it needed from the OEMs so it designed the thing from the ground up and wound up building its own stripped-down Intel and AMD servers, power supplies, server racks and battery backup systems.

Its approach meant it had total control over every part of the system from the software on up and that meant it could use a 480-volt electrical distribution system to reduce energy loss; remove anything in the servers that didn't contribute to efficiency; reuse hot aisle air in winter to heat its offices; and eliminate the need for a central uninterruptible power supply.

As a result it claims its soon-to-open data center in Prineville, Oregon, is 38% more efficient and 24% less expensive to build and run than other state-of-the-art data centers. It's also supposed to support more Facebook users and offer them real-time social experiences - such as the ability to read comments as they are written or see friends of friends appear dynamically as the user searches.

The facility is reportedly fetching a PUE of 1.07, which is below the EPA-defined state-of-the-art industry average of 1.5and means 93% of the energy from the grid makes it into every so-called Open Compute server

It's eliminated centralized chillers and 480V-to-208V transformation. It says Ethernet-powered LED lighting and its passive cooling infrastructure cut the energy spent on running the facility further.

The servers it designed reportedly use 22% fewer materials and are 1.5U high to accommodate taller heat sinks and larger fans. The power supplies, evidently from HP, are reportedly 94.5% efficient.

Thursday it released the specifications and mechanical drawings covering its motherboards, power supply, server chassis, server racks and battery cabinets. It's also sharing its data center electrical and mechanical construction specifications.

Greenpeace, a critic of Facebook's piggish energy use, says efficiency isn't enough. It needs to tap clean, renewable energy sources instead of coal.

Facebook worked with Alfa Tech, AMD, Delta, Intel, Power-One and Quanta to develop the first generation of the technologies used and is working with Dell, HP, Rackspace, Skype and Zynga on its next generation. Apparently it's not thinking of using ARM.

It says it's already talking to its peers about how they can work together on Open Compute Project technology. Competitors were seen at its announcement.

After Ubuntu, Windows Looks Increasingly Bad, Increasingly Archaic, Increasingly Unfriendly

2011-04-19T21:22:00.000-07:00

My recent switch to a single-boot Ubuntu setup on my Thinkpad T60 simply floors me on a regular basis. Most recently it's had to do with the experience of maintaining the software. Fresh from a very long Windows 2000 experience and a four-month Windows XP experience along with a long-time Linux sys admin role puts me in a great position to assess Ubuntu. Three prior attempts over the years at using Linux as my daily desktop OS had me primed for failure. Well, Ubuntu takes Linux where I've long hoped it would go - easy to use, reliable, dependable, great applications too but more on that later. It has some elegance to it - bet you never heard that about a Linux desktop before.
There are many night-and-day differences between Windows and Ubuntu and, for a guy that does 80% standard office tasks and the rest of the time I'm doing Linux admin tasks, it was nearly all in favor of Ubuntu after the first few weeks of the transition. Overall, my productivity and the scope of things I can do with Ubuntu far exceed what I could do with Windows and just as importantly Ubuntu (like any Linux would) lets me easily create my own productivity shortcuts of a variety of sorts.
One of the things that's become clear as I've gotten used to the appliance-like experience of Ubuntu is that the future of software in an open source-dominated world is going to be significantly different than the world dominated by Microsoft. So what distant point on the horizon has Ubuntu shone a light on for me? Simple. Software will increasingly compete on ease of use in the total software experience more than on features. The future will be more about being simple than about any other dimension.

Here are some recent use cases:
_ I needed to rebuild my T60 with a fresh OS. Which was easier? MS Windows with a factory install disk, separate disks for Office and for Virus protection and then a lot of hunt-and-peck downloading for various apps like Thunderbird, Firefox, SSH, and Calendar or....Ubuntu with one CD and an OS that includes an integrated, extensible, and slick software package manager where all the software is approved and tailored to the installation?

_ I needed to rebuild a T43. I tried to use the rebuild partition included on the HD but it was corrupt. So I tried to make factory-install disks but the corrupt partition prevented it. Next option? Call Lenovo and get disks sent for $51. That process took five days and eight CD-ROMs from start to finish. With Ubuntu, this process takes three hours max, not four days and there's no software keys or other things to track down. The labor involved is less than a fifth with Ubuntu and the delivered product is a lot more productive - for my use models anyway.

_ I needed to resubscribe to Symantec on a Windows machine. Again this is a 30-60 minute timeout from production AND a $49 charge AND a hassle with product keys and sending data about my machine and purchases around to companies that I'd choose not have it if I had a choice. But I didn't since Windows XP needs Symantec's products badly even though these scanning and cleaning products degrade machine performance badly - even with a gig of RAM.

_ And I now hear that Windows Vista renames the partition it's installed on what used to be the C: partition. I need to check out this story but the very idea of automatic partition renaming is insane to even contemplate.
So my machine sings with Ubuntu. Having no virus scanning alone unleashes a responsiveness that makes the power of the T60's Intel dual-core shine. And what am I noticing most about all of this?
Well, first off Ubuntu is good as a productivity platform. Without that, the rest wouldn't matter a bit. But since Ubuntu is not only good on features but reliability then at least some of us would crawl over broken glass to get it installed.
But, in fact, there's no broken glass in the picture. It's the opposite. Ubuntu's installation is so easy, and maintaining it once it's installed is so simple that Ubuntu nearly falls into your machine like a ying to the hardware's yang. Once there, Ubuntu happily makes a home in your head with hardly a blip. I think Ubuntu actually dropped my blood pressure. Not something you typically find when switching ALL your software for something that's about as alien to Windows as it possibly can be.
Once that major hurdle is cleared, then the other big issues come into focus. Ease of install, easy updates, easy software maintenance, easy data backups. After experiencing Ubuntu, the world of Windows looks increasingly bad, increasingly archaic, increasingly like a neighborhood that makes life hard. Why should I put up with what Windows makes me go through if I don't have to?
I've used rsync for backups for years. I back up my mail, my Thunderbird data, and "my document" directory (i.e., /home/xxxx/). One of these backup commands looks like this and sits in a single shell script and runs from cron once a day (I've already sent the ssh key to the backup target server so no need to manually login to the backup server for this command to run):

rsync -avgz /home/xxxx/.mozilla-thunderbird/ root@mycomcastipnumber:/hdb/ibmt60-ubuntu-mozilla-tbird/ >>
/home/xxxx/backup-.txt

That little command executes in a few seconds to a few minutes no matter where I am on the Internet and even if I've added some decently sized files to my computer. I've got my home router set up to pass the ssh port 22 through to a Linux server sitting in my attic. Quick and painless backups run without a hitch. It's a thing of beauty. I use the same solution for my servers so having a single platform from server to desktop has benefits and this is but one of them. I used to sweat about my Windows backups in the old days - if I did them every two weeks, I was happy. Ubuntu dropped my blood pressure on backups alone by 10% and now I have to decide how often is too often to do a backup. Also, I'm up on the MIRRA product but, trust me, you don't want to forget a password there.
Through a similar setup, I can also print to my home printer from any Internet connection. This is not a Windows- or Linux-specific feature but it's nice to have and I use it more than I expected. This is just good fun but it may also drop my blood pressure a point or two.
So far, none of this is news to those in the know about Ubuntu. It's not news but it is a big deal. A very big deal. Ubuntu is getting rave reviews: it's a productive platform, it's a reliable platform, it's a durable platform, it's an upgradeable platform, it's an easy-to-install platform, and adoption is through the roof.
What's changing in all this?
In my view, once you realize the platform is viable from a daily productivity standpoint (exceedingly so), the #1 thing that Ubuntu is then changing is ease of access to software. If I had decided to rebuild my PC with Windows XP - we won't even talk about Vista - this is what I was looking at:

1) Buy OEM Install disks from Lenovo because my rebuild partition was corrupt - $51.

2) Buy a Symantec subscription because I was done with the 90-day free trial - $49.

3) Buy an extra 512MB of RAM because XP couldn't run Firefox, Thunderbird, MS Word, MS Excel, and SSH all at once with 512MB of installed RAM - $104.

4) Install all of the above with product keys along the way - four hours? Maybe six? Maybe more because the tools for getting 2GB-3GB of mail data back into Thunderbird in Windows aren't nearly as good as the same tools in Linux.
That's $204 just to get me back to where I thought I was two months back - i.e., a machine with XP and Office on it. Symantec alone is going to want to pick my pocket again at some point.
Ubuntu releases me from these costs and from these long-term headaches:

1) Viruses - I no longer worry and I no longer need to check my PC - that's a relief. You can pick nits here about security but the bottom line is Ubuntu is orders of magnitude better.

2) Vulnerabilities - Windows is like Swiss cheese with so many vulnerabilities that it's sick - you can't connect XP to a public Internet connection (i.e., behind a router is OK but direct to the net isn't). Ubuntu? It's Linux - no worries.

3) Thanks to #1 and #2, I'm free from products like Symantec and Norton and the dollar expense, the complexity of administering them (those pop-ups are annoying and a productivity hit), and wondering when they expire next.

4) Software updates for the entire collection of software on the machine are simple in Ubuntu.

5) Backups are automatic.
That's batting for the cycle. Am I missing anything? Anything at all? Yes. Printing is easier in Ubuntu for older printers like the HP Laserjet 4 on a D-Link print server in the office and the HP 6L on an SMC print server in the home office. Multifunction printers are more of a challenge. A little care in printer purchases going forward takes this issue off the plate and I'm fine with the printer solution in place that has largely been stumbled upon.
The one bit of software that was Windows-related was a QuickBooks Timer. I haven't needed it because I began editing the output of that program in Excel six months ago because the QuickBooks Timer was too much of a clod interface to be productive. When I switched from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice on Windows XP, I continued not using the QuickBooks Timer. Doing the same manual editing of these QuickBooks Timer output files in OpenOffice Calc on Linux is a breeze. If there were a QuickBooks Timer for Linux, I wouldn't use it so I haven't checked for it.
In sum, what's changing about software? The installation, maintenance, and use of software in Windows have become a burden. A huge burden. And I don't think the average Windows user realizes how much out of their way they are going to keep their Windows PCs working. Windows challenges users and makes for a very expensive user experience in time and dollars if users follow the book and use the latest virus protection, keep that protection updated, and avoid the pitfalls that are squarely on the path that normal users use. In the best case, you end up with a machine that has a lot of crapware installed on it and is slow and clunky to use. In the more typical case, you end up with a machine that spirals to a grinding halt over six to 12 months - like the T43 I'm working on right now. A machine that has trouble opening an Excel file in three minutes because it has so much software competing for disk access and CPU cycles.
My experience with Linux on the server with its multi-hundred day uptimes broken by hardware upgrades, not software reboots, and with no performance degradation even at high disk utilizations tells me Ubuntu isn't taking me down with it. My blood pressure is truly low now.
I'm literally running out the door to get the word rolling on this changing dynamic. It's that big. And a word to IBM and Lenovo: if you're listening, Ubuntu as an OEM install on your Thinkpad T and X series would be a huge win for you and for the the OSS adoption curve. This is a classic case of experience changing perception and it's got me to thinking about a seamless platform from server to desktop to phone - think about it.

HP Starts Pushing Desktop Linux

2011-04-19T21:19:00.001-07:00

HP has supposedly been selling MandrakeSoft Linux on the desktop for a while but it's been so quiet about it that for all intents and purposes it's been a stealth operation.

But now that the desktop Linux hype meter is registering new highs, HP has decided to raise the decibel level.

It says it's got two new Linux desktops for the North American SMB market. One is the first of a new basic 2000 series, the HP Compaq Business Desktop dx2000. The company figures the street price of a Celeron model will be $389 to start. The Hyper-Threaded Pentium 4 unita will be pricier.

The other box is a mainstream widget designated the dc5000, another series that will come with HP Lifecycle manageability tools and is priced at $599 for a Celeron chip and $679 for a P4 box.

According to HP's custom, the boxes will be sold with Mandrake Linux, a boon for the French company that just filed its plan to emerge from the Parisian version of Chapter 11 last week. The same PCs can be had with Windows XP, by the way.

An HP Compaq 7000 series, due this summer, will offer customers advanced security, serviceability and manageability features, including HP Lifecycle Solutions to deploy and maintain PCs in corporate networks.

The microtower dx2000 features four DIMM slots to support single- or dual-channel memory configurations and offers quick and easy utilization of external peripherals with eight USB 2.0 ports.

The box can be had at clock rates up to 3GHz, with a maximum 80GB drive, up to one gigabyte of double data rate (DDR) SDRAM and a choice of optical drives.

Though it uses the same processors as the 2000, the dc5000 is intended for more advanced computing, and comes in two designs - a small form factor and a microtower. It can support a 160GB drive and up to 4GB of DDR SDRAM. Both form factors are designed with tool-less access to internal components and drives.

HP seems to think XP will dominate the 5000 platform.

Meanwhile, Mandrake's Chapter 11 exit plan, which the courts have yet to accept, calls for it to repay 4.1 million euros in liabilities over the next nine years and no interest. It says it's committed to repaying 3.3 million euros of the total amount, but that 800,000 euros is conditional on "certain events" that it doesn't describe.

The company says it means the liabilities will be pay off out of revenues and that it won't need to raise additional capital. At last word it had subscriptions from existing investors to pay 2.10 euros apiece for an additional 358,000 shares, giving Mandrake a stronger capital base.

Although the exit plan hasn't been rubberstamped by a court, Mandrake shares are trading again on Marche Libre after a 14-month absence.

The company is working on a new desktop kit based on the 2.6 Linux kernel that will offer a choice of KDE 3.2, Gnome 2.4 or the house-brand MandrakeGalaxy 2 desktop environments as well as OpenOffice 1.1

Tying Google Search into Nuxeo Enterprise CMS

2011-04-19T21:18:00.000-07:00

Open source enterprise content management (ECM) vendor Nuxeo (news, site) announced the Nuxeo GSA Connector that enables Google Search Appliance to index and search Nuxeo ECM content. Organizations using Nuxeo and Google’s search appliance can now have the ECM content in same search results as other content indexed by search appliance and actually get closer to living up to the “enterprise search” moniker.

Enterprise Search and ECM

Google Search Appliance (GSA) provides Google search capabilities to enterprise content. GSA connects to many content sources, like the popular SharePoint 2010, out-of-the-box, but alas, Nuxeo was not among that list. However, no longer does content stored in Nuxeo’s open source ECM have to be AWOL from search results with the release of the new Nuxeo GSA Connector.

The Nuxeo GSA Connector requires Nuxeo DM 5.4.0.1 or Nuxeo DM 5.4.1 and includes:

Google Enterprise Connector Manager: Allows GSA to search and serve documents from the Nuxeo repository.
Nuxeo Google Search Appliance connector type: Allows user to configure the connection and define the content to index.

Using Nuxeo’s GSA Connector is transparent to end-users. Once an administrator has installed the connector, Nuxeo ECM documents appear in the search results of their local Google website. When users select the document, the document is served from Nuxeo.

Nuxeo GSA administration

Nuxeo has integrated security with the connector. The connector applies the access rights from Nuxeo ECM to the search results. The first time search results include Nuxeo documents, the platform displays a login window. Users must log in to see Nuxeo results and can only see documents they can access in Nuxeo ECM. The credentials are saved for future searches.

Organizations invested in open source should also take note that the source code for the connector is open and available under the LGPL license. Complete documentation for the connector is available on the Nuxeo site.

Getting the Connector

The new open source Nuxeo GSA Connector is available in the Nuxeo Marketplace. Nuxeo Connect subscribers can download and install it directly in Nuxeo DM via the in-product Update Center. Non-Connect subscribers can sign up for a trial. Users that decide to try out the connector should be aware that the package does not support hot reloading. They should follow the Nuxeo GSA Connector documentation for installation instructions.

As enterprise content grows in size and becomes more diverse, organizations continue to struggle to provide a unified view of all information assets. Nuxeo’s move to provide a connector to GSA gets some of these organizations just a little closer to that goal.

The Future of Cheap Androids Begins Now

2011-04-12T02:02:00.000-07:00

The arrival of low-priced smartphones is an event many have been waiting on for some time. Sure there are often buy one, get one deals or one-day specials where you can find a smartphone for as little as a penny, but in most cases, such deals are tied to expensive plan commitments that last for two years. For a real paradigm shift, we’ll need to see unsubsidized handsets priced at or under $100 that can be used on a month-to-month basis. We’re inching closer to that shift.

Take the LG Optimus V, for example. Virgin Mobile just began selling this Android smartphone for $149. Since Virgin Mobile is a pre-paid operator, there’s no contract involved. That means the company is selling the handset at full-price; there’s no subsidy, no contract cancellation fee and no commitment. You pay $149 and the phone is yours. Monthly plans that include unlimited mobile broadband access with Virgin Mobile — which uses Sprint’s network — start at $25 with a limited amount of minutes.

Think about that for a second. With a $149 initial investment and then an ongoing cost of less than $1 per day, someone can have a basic, but useful, smartphone in the U.S., with the flexibility of upgrading to a better phone or different carrier at any point in time. Granted, the Optimus V doesn’t compare to the high-end specifications of the latest and greatest Androids, Apple’s iPhone, or other currently popular devices, but I’m not sure that matters.

I reviewed the LG Optimus T handset back in November, and it’s essentially the same phone as the Optimus V; LG is rebadging the basic design for different carriers. For a long-time mobile device user that values high performance, the Optimus may not be as fast or as feature-packed as what I’m used to. But that doesn’t mean it won’t provide value to those currently on feature phones or other low-end smartphones. In my review, I noted:

This handset does just about everything that my more expensive phone can do. You can install mobile apps from the Android Market (yay Angry Birds!), share pics on Facebook (taken with a decent, but not high-end camera), browse the web over 3G or Wi-Fi, manage email on the go, check-in on Foursquare, use Google’s Navigation and use Google Voice services. The phone uses the latest version of Android, which helps boost performance. Plus, the 1500 mAh battery paired with a slower processor makes for an all-day device.

All of the essential functions are there: 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a touchscreen display, GPS, a 3.2-megapixel camera and more. Plus, the handset can run a myriad of software found in the Android Market. Would I like to see the device have more guts than the 600 MHz processor provides? Sure I would, but each improved feature boosts the costs and puts the device out of reach for more consumers on a tight budget, and besides, I’m not in the target audience for this device.

The Optimus handset line, especially when paired with a low-cost pre-paid plan, represents the coming wave of cheaper smartphones: a slowly rising tide that will bring additional challenges to companies such as Nokia that sell more feature phones than any company in the world today. Indeed, outside the U.S., where Nokia is a popular brand, such cheap smartphones may even greater risk to Nokia. Why? Because here in the U.S. our handsets are generally tied or locked to a carrier and we have two different network technologies. But in Europe and elsewhere, it’s not uncommon to buy a phone, then purchase a SIM card from whichever carrier is currently offering the cheapest voice and data rates. A cheap, no-contract handset can run on any number of networks in that case, making the device an even more appealing alternative to a feature phone.

Adding additional pressure is the likelihood of these Android handsets getting cheaper in the future. Brian Modoff from Deutsche Bank Equity Research yesterday issued this note:

By 2013, we expect 1 GHz smartphones to be available for $100. The combination of a $0 license for Android and the steady march of Moore’s Law could translate into $100 smartphones by late 2012 or early 2013. At that point, we think even the average emerging markets’ consumer shift their purchase sharply away from feature phones to smartphones, posing a serious challenge to companies such as Nokia without a clear strategy for low-end operating systems.

I agree with Modoff in principle, but I suspect the timeline he presents for a $100 smartphone is too conservative. By the end of this year, I expect to see no-contract Android devices costing $99 or less, paired with reasonably priced pre-paid plans. There may be a question of exactly when that will happen, but there’s no question that it will happen. And when it does, it will open up the floodgates for upgrades to those on feature phones and kick smartphone adoption into an even higher gear.