Season greetings, happy holiday

Seasons greetings, and happy holiday wishes to you from our team at devdaily.com. We're all taking off the rest of this week, and most of next week, to re-charge our batteries for next year. Have a wonderful holiday season!

Linux share of netbooks increasing

I just read this Computerworld article that says the Linux worldwide netbook market share is increasing, and currently stands at 32% of the worldwide market, while Windows runs 68% of the netbook computers internationally.

To me this is very, very interesting, because it appears that Linux may be installed on as few as 4% of netbooks in the U.S. market. Really, this amazes me to see such a disparity between netbook sales in the U.S. verses those international sales numbers. In short, internationally people seem to be embracing Linux on the desktop with no concerns. Why is it so different in the United States?

I feel a trip to Best Buy coming on, lol.

Ray Kurzweil's crystal ball

Here's a link to a short but interesting list of technology predictions from Ray Kurzweil, including some "hits" and "misses". If you haven't heard of Mr. Kurzweil before, check out his page on Wikipedia. He's been involved in a lot of interesting things, and has some very interesting views related to health and aging (consuming 150+ pills per day and undergoing some form of 'transfusions' on the weekends).

Quick follow-up: The Wikipedia article has some interesting criticism of Kurzweil's predictions and his concept of a Singularity. That being said, the man has done some amazing things in his lifetime.

Speed of the internet is killing traditional media (old news :)

This is a little bit of an old story now (which is a little ironic), but this story about how the internet (and twitter specifically) are killing traditional media is an interesting read.

And to acknowledge something the author of that article did not, here's a link to the origination of the phrase "information wants to be free" (first recorded from Stewart Brand at the first Hackers Conference in 1984).

NY Times reader data visualization

The NY Times shares a data visualization, showing where their readers are coming from. They share two videos which show the traffic on the day Michael Jackson died. Pretty interesting to watch.

I'm always amazed by the data visualizations people come up with. I think part of it is knowing the possibilities of data visualization, and the other is knowing your data very well.

Boeing 787 maiden flight

I was just reading about the new Boeing 787 when I came across this paragraph:

"The plane is the first of six 787s Boeing will use in the nine-month flight-test program that will subject the planes to conditions well beyond those found in normal airline service, including temperature extremes, flying on one engine and slamming on the brakes at takeoff speed."

Okay, I don't want to be the pilot for those tests, lol.

Sun releases OpenSSO Express 9

Woo hoo hoo, Sun just released OpenSSO Express 9 and Open DS 2.2. I'm not familiar with their "fine-grained" entitlement engine, but I used OpenSSO a *lot* this summer, and I learned how to make it dance a little bit.

Here's a blurb from Sun's press release today:

"With the release of Sun’s fine-grained entitlement enforcement engine and next-generation directory proxy server, Sun has completed its 2009 portfolio update and has added a high-scaling, standards-based entitlement enforcement solution and a next generation proxy server to our arsenal of capabilities,” said Daniel Raskin, chief identity strategist at Sun. “Innovative functionality such as granular security controls combined with the ability to quickly augment infrastructure performance keeps Sun well-positioned as a leading provider of large-scale identity management solutions."

Twitter feature test for businesses

Just reading on the Twitter blog, and they are offering a "feature test for businesses". Here's a description from their blog:

"The feature we are beta testing is called 'Contributors' – it enables users to engage in more authentic conversations with businesses by allowing those organizations to manage multiple contributors to their account. The feature appends the contributor's username to the tweet byline, making the business to consumer communication more personal; e.g. if @Twitter invites @Biz to tweet on its behalf, then a tweet from @Twitter would include @Biz in the byline so that users know more about the real people behind organizations."

They go on to note that this feature is one of several in development, and some features will be visible to regular users, and some will not.

This particular feature sounds like a business blog that can have many writers, so the ability to tweet is gaining a feature similar to corporate blogging ... the lines get blurred a little bit.

Yellowstone molten rock goes 400 miles deep

I don't understand all of this article yet, but I just started reading that Yellowstone's molten rock plumbing goes 400+ miles deep. The scary part says "so a future cataclysmic eruption could be even larger than thought."

Okay, wow, it gets worse:

"The study's of Yellowstone's plume also suggests the same "hotspot" that feeds Yellowstone volcanism also triggered the Columbia River "flood basalts" that buried parts of Oregon, Washington state and Idaho with lava starting 17 million years ago.

Yikes.

Evil mad scientist website

I just found this cool Evil Mad Scientist website linked from a MAKE magazine article. Very cool, in a mad, evil scientist sort of way. (Insert evil laughter here ...)

Apple versus Psystar - legal stuff

A friend just told me about a website named Groklaw, and it's pretty cool. We started looking at some MySQL licensing stuff, but I'm more interested in this Apple/Psystar legal page at Groklaw. If you can read it, they have a nice blow-by-blow on the Apple/Psystar legal battle.

Tivo on your PC for just $40

Wow, this is huge, TiVo h/w and s/w for just $40:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13845_3-10413753-58.html?tag=rtcol;pop

I have no idea why it's that cheap, but that's a huge deal ... available only to PC owners, lol.

(It would be huge-er if they actually had this product in stock. But seriously, having tv on a PC is starting to become very, very mainstream.)

Explore the galaxy at different wavelengths

This is cool: Explore the galaxy at different wavelengths. Just grab the slider in the upper-right corner to see the same view of the galaxy, at different wavelengths.

Louisville, Kentucky illustrator/artist - Angryblue

Oops, almost forgot, I know this Louisville Kentucky artist (angryblue.com) through a friend, and I really dig his work. To be sure, babies, skulls, and rats in jars are not for everybody, but IMHO his artwork is excellent.

He has also released two art books on Ink Alchemy, which is also very cool.

I think my friend said Justin turned him onto 16 Horsepower, and if so, that's all the better.

How to delete an iPhone app

Nothing major yet today, but we just updated the "How to delete an iPhone app" article on the devdaily site. I'm going to update my iMac to Snow Leopard shortly, so we wanted to update that one last time before any changes we need to make to account for Snow Leopard, the iPhone 3G, and the latest rev of iTunes.

Technologies for the future

For a slide show, this Kiplinger list of "8 technologies to change your future" is interesting. The Budget Electric car, priced at $25K, looks space-age like. In item 2, auto traffic and pedestrians may convert motion to electricity.

Later, they claim the energy storage business will grow 10-fold over the next 20 years. That estimate seems low in my opinion. They mention Thorium power as an alternative to uranium, oil in North Dakota, power from space, and 'power spray'.

Hmm, there seems to be one and only one theme here ... I'm all for focusing on energy, but there's a whole bio-engineering field out there with some huge potential.

Google Chrome for Mac OS X (beta)

Woo-joo, Google Chrome for Mac OS X is alive in a beta form! Here's a link to a Chrome for OS X review we just put together on the devdaily website.

16 Horsepower

A friend of mine turned me on to a band named 16 Horsepower, and wow, I really like some of their songs. This song, American Wheeze, gives you a good idea of what they're capable of. I dig the intensity of the lead singer. He reminds me of Springsteen in that regard.

Java developers jobs, and MacBook skins and protective covers

I just collaborated with Al on several new articles on the devdaily.com website, and I have to say, I like this.

Here are links to three articles we just researched and published. The first one is about Java developer jobs, and the next two are related to MacBook skins and MacBook protective covers:

• Java developer jobs (Java, JSF, Struts, and Spring jobs)


• MacBook protective covers, shells, case, and sleeves


• MacBook skins - a collection of MacBook skin websites

Writing up these Java and Mac/MacBook articles has been loads of fun, and I look forward to working on more!

An email joke gone wrong

Wow, a non-profit group that I've supported in the past managed to just send everyone on their mailing list an email message (asking for more money) with the Subject line "Give a $hit".

Wow, that's a joke gone terribly wrong.

Just got my butt kicked, but in a good way

There are days as a programmer where someone else just kicks your butt, and today is one of those days. But it's a good thing, I'm working on an open source project, and another person rewrote my code and said "What do you think about this?" All I could say was, "You just kicked my butt, but I like it."

That's a great thing about open source and collaboration. In this case, at a high level, I had a pretty good idea, but then someone else came in with their strength and really improved what I was trying to accomplish.

Chevrolet Volt information and picture gallery

Wired has a nice photo gallery of the upcoming Chevy Volt. I think these are some of the most interesting quotes from their story:

• The Volt is about the same size as the Toyota Prius and weighs a little more than the Chevrolet Cruze.
• "The Volt is nearly as slippery in the wind tunnel as the EV1 — the most aerodynamic car GM has ever built," said Mike Simcoe, executive director of design for Chevrolet.
• GM says the lithium-ion battery is good for 40 miles. Once it winds down, the gasoline engine kicks in.
• Plug the cord into a conventional 110-volt, 12-amp socket and you’ll charge the Volt’s battery in 6 or 8 hours. Stick it into a 220-volt, 15-amp outlet like your dryer uses and Posawatz said you can do it in less than 3.

If cars are going electric, I think we need to drive on roads that charge the cars as we drive along, like those all slot-car racing tracks I had when I was growing up, the ones with the two metal wires that ran the length of the track. I guess that won't work out on the open roads, so we may have to go with something like magnetism.

How to delete/uninstall an iPhone app

I'll try not to write too much about the devdaily website, but a friend of mine runs it, and I've helped him with some things from time to time.

One thing I wrote was this short iPhone tutorial on how to delete (uninstall) an iPhone app. I found out how to delete/uninstall an iPhone app quite by accident, and that's when I came up with this tutorial.

In a related note, you basically do the same thing to move an iPhone app icon.

DICE job search page

The DICE web site doesn't make this page easily available any more, but if you're searching for a contracting job and don't want to create an account, here you go:

http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/genthree/index.jsp

(I just happened to stumble on that during a recent job search, and thought I'd share it here.)

Indoor RC helicopter

I dig this indoor remote-control helicopter:

http://scientificsonline.com/product.asp_Q_pn_E_3123779

I've been looking around for geek Christmas gifts lately, and this one is pretty high on my list. Not very practical, but fun. :)

Neil Diamond items (for my mom)

Three "Did you know?" items, hand-picked especially for mom:

• Neil Diamond's real name is ... Neil Diamond. (I always figured that was a stage name.)
• One of his nickname's is "The Jewish Elvis".
• And he is Polish (well, Polish and Russian ... they write it as "a Jewish family descended from Russian and Polish immigrants).

If that doesn't get my mom on a computer, I don't know what will. :)

Windows 7 versus Mac pricing

I looked at Mac and PC laptops the other day with my wife, and Windows 7 looks much improved. I'm going to go back to Best Buy and play with it some more.

The coolest part I've seen is that it includes Windows Media Center. That seems really nice if you have a desktop/tower pc, or would be really cool if you could wirelessly access your cable tv from your laptop. Either one, that's definitely one thing OS X does not have by default. You have to get the Apple TV product for anything like that.

The PC prices really are much lower than the Mac prices. I'm going to do some research on this, but it really is shocking at the low end. One company had a deal where you can get a tower, a laptop, and a netbook for $1,200.

Apple really does not compete on the low end.

So long Gears, we hardly knew ya

I haven't kept up with Google Gears much, so I was surprised to read that the project is being ended:

http://www.macworld.com/article/144715/2009/12/gears.html

Of course I don't know too much about HTML5 right now either ... so much to learn (and keep learning)!

Football passer rating needs help

In NFL news ... I think Tom Brady and Peyton Manning are both great QBs, but I don't like the way these numbers turn out today:

T. Brady: 19/29, 352 yards, 2 TDs, 2 INTs => 101.5 rating

P. Manning: 24/37, 270 yards, 1 TD, 0 INT => 95.6 rating

However the "passer rating" formula works, I think they give yards/attempt and TDs too much weight against those 2 INTs of Brady. For all the stats know, Brady's 2 picks could have been returned for TDs. I was really surprised that he didn't have a rating in the 80s with these stats.

The Roku

Another quick link: The Roku digital video player is one of the coolest electronic gadgets of the year.

A funny Carl Sagan video

I'm not sure how to add plain old links here yet, but this is a pretty funny Carl Sagan video.

Programming tools I use

Still getting warmed up, here's a short list of programming tools I know (and generally love):

• Java
• Ruby
• Perl
• PHP
• MySQL
• Postgres

I'll pretty much check out any open source tool, but as far as what I use on a daily basis, those are the primary tools and languages.

Honda P-NUT concept car

The Honda P-NUT concept car is probably the coolest thing I've seen in a while. Sure, it may never happen, but it's a cool idea.

OpenSSO

I added some OpenSSO links to my blogroll here because I used it a lot during this past year, and I think it's a great tool for what it does. I only hope Oracle doesn't destroy it with the purchase of Sun.

Geek gifts for 2009

Digging around a bit, I like this collection of "Geek gifts for 2009", in particular the "Geek gifts for under $20" post.

Of course, as geek gifts go, ThinkGeek is a great resource.

Searching for Bill Joy

As I set up this blog, I'm a fan of Bill Joy, but he's a hard guy to find on the internet.

Ray Kurzweil seems like the opposite of Bill Joy in many ways, but I like seeing what both have to say.

Looking into Netbeans

I'm going to start working with Netbeans this week. I've been using Eclipse for several years now, but friends are telling me to give Netbeans a shot, so okay, here goes.

Hello, world

Just a quick Hello to get started with here.