UTF-8 and MySQL

MySQL seems to operate in latin1 encoding by default, not in UTF-8, even though in many cases (such as most Linux distributions), the system uses UTF-8 for everything else by default. Today, this situation caused a confusing problem for me. From 30,000 feet, the application is a Java web application that reads data from a … Continue reading UTF-8 and MySQL →

X#

While browsing reddit today, I ran across X#, a programming language that describes itself as “an XML-oriented programming language designed to quickly create Web applications and services.” Looking over the samples, I have to agree with the reddit description: I can’t believe they are serious about this! In my opinion, XML is a great data … Continue reading X# →

gTLDs

I was recently asked for my opinions on gTLDs (generic top level domains) – here are my thoughts. When a client runs a gTLD, there is (IMHO) a high cost (it’s $185k application + $75k/yr). What gTLD do you get? .integralblue, .integralblueinc, .ig, etc How do you use the gTLD, and tell people it’s a … Continue reading gTLDs →

Shuttleworth on Project Management

Mark Shuttleworth, of Thawte fortune and Ubuntu fame, has some (IMHO) neat ideas on how to manage software development efforts that may be interesting to spend a few human processing cycles considering. http://lwn.net/Articles/292031 Despite the article being written for Free Software and Linux, I think it’s incredibly relevant to all development efforts – read it … Continue reading Shuttleworth on Project Management →

Resig’s Processing.js

John Resig (of jQuery fame) released processing.js on Thursday. If you haven’t checked it out, you should! It is really impressive. On the newest versions of some browsers, and on the next version of others, it’s possible to pretty much duplicate the capabilities of Flash, but entirely using markup and Javascript. The real excitement comes … Continue reading Resig’s Processing.js →

CSS Color Shorthand not supported in Adobe Flash

Flash doesn’t support CSS color shorthand – an obscure feature of CSS that I bet not many know about. CSS color shorthand defines that whenever a both hex digits in a color component of a CSS color are the same, you can eliminate one digit to reduce the color definition from 6 digits (2 each … Continue reading CSS Color Shorthand not supported in Adobe Flash →

Analyst Admits Open Source Will Quietly Take Over

“In a few years’ time, almost all businesses will use open source” says a recent Gartner report entitled, “The State of Open Source 2008.” The report continues with statements such as, “By 2012, more than 90 percent of enterprises will use open source in direct or embedded forms.” (I’m getting my data from ZDNet, as … Continue reading Analyst Admits Open Source Will Quietly Take Over →

“95% of software is developed by enterprises each year and is not for resale”

At the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, Jim Whitehurst (CEO of Red Hat) made a number of great points about Free Software and how it can help companies, including his own. According to Whitehurst, “95% of software is developed by enterprises each year and is not for resale.” Furthermore, he states … Continue reading “95% of software is developed by enterprises each year and is not for resale” →

Windows, Java, and an Internationalization Mess

The project which I’m currently working on is a Java project, powered by Spring, built by Maven. I use Ubuntu/Linux to build and run the project locally, but everyone else on the team uses Windows XP. We recently got back a set of translations that included pages in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Russian – all … Continue reading Windows, Java, and an Internationalization Mess →