Google Calendar

http://calendar.google.com is now live, which probably means Google will be launching this site very soon. My hunch is Google Calendar will be revealed at When 2.0 Conference tomorrow. Another question is what format will Google Calendar be in? Plain XML or even in something like Simple Sharing Extensions for RSS and OPML. I guess we will know soon

Xbox 360 Update Posted By Microsoft

Microsoft has posted its latest Xbox 360 update last night, which makes a couple of tweaks to the console's system software, according to the brief list of fixes posted by Microsoft. The update adds improvements to Xbox Guide and to the Dutch Xbox Live network configuration. It also provides more detailed information on disk that can't be read or region errors. It also increases the accuracy of 'last time played' readouts and provides a saved-game retention option when users' profiles are removed.

The update will automatically install when users sign on to Xbox Live

Autistic Savant Daniel Tammet Explains

Daniel Tammet is an autistic savant. He can perform mind-boggling mathematical calculations at breakneck speeds. But unlike other savants, who can perform similar feats, Tammet can describe how he does it. He speaks seven languages and is even devising his own language. Now scientists are asking whether his exceptional abilities are the key to unlock the secrets of autism.

Tammet is a "savant", an individual with an astonishing, extraordinary mental ability. An estimated 10% of the autistic population - and an estimated 1% of the non-autistic population - have savant abilities, but no one knows exactly why. A number of scientists now hope that Tammet might help us to understand better. Professor Allan Snyder, from the Centre for the Mind at the Australian National University in Canberra, explains why Tammet is of particular, and international, scientific interest. "Savants can't usually tell us how they do what they do," says Snyder. "It just comes to them. Daniel can. He describes what he sees in his head. That's why he's exciting. He could be the Rosetta Stone."

Read the whole article here

Google Bookmarks

So Google came out with Google Bookmarks
What's going on with Google, the last 3 things that they came out with are all garbage?
Google Video...bad quality, not enough content
Google Pack...nothing new all the old stuff packaged into one download
Google Bookmarks...who needs this, just use del.icio.us
What's next Google ShareSite? Something like digg or reddit?
Google wake up and show something new/original. When is Google Calendar coming out? There are rumors about the existence of such an application
Enough said...Oh wait I forgot the Google RSS Reader..... also garbage

DB2....Free Version

So after Microsoft and Oracle IBM is also offering a free version of their RDBMS DB2
DB2 Express-C is the same database as IBM's commercial offerings but the company places limits on what kind of hardware it can run on.
It can be deployed on systems with two processor cores or up to two dual-core chips on Advanced Micro Devices- or Intel-based servers. The memory limit is 4GB but there are no limits on the size of database or number of users.

IBM said that a future version of DB2 Express-C, code-named Viper, will include hybrid relational and XML database features. Viper is due for release this year.

Joshua Schachter (Del.icio.us) Interview

The creator of Del.icio.us has big plans for his innovative social tagging site but has no regrets about selling it to Yahoo

Even though Joshua Schachter was rumoured to be about $30m richer, this was far from his best Christmas. Just nine days after Yahoo bought his company, Delicious (http://del.icio.us), and at a time when all eyes were on it, the power failed - leading to a service outage that meant 31-year-old Schachter had to work all hours to fix the site's technical emergencies.
Small wonder that when I got in touch, the guy who invented one of the hottest new ideas online - and just sold it for a personal fortune - couldn't have sounded more miserable. Online, the gossip was about how much he sold for, and the reach of "user tagging", the idea that Delicious introduced. But Schachter, the site's creator, mainly sounded relieved to have the $57bn corporation taking over.

Why? Because from Delicious's inception in September 2003 until the founding of the actual company last March, he did most of the work himself. At times, it was incredibly stressful. "It would crash occasionally, and it would largely stay down until I could deal with it, but often it would happen while I was trying to get on planes. So I would be sitting on a plane trying to login from my PDA."

Read the rest here

Computer Science:Quotations for Learning and Programming

I found this URL on reddit and decided to check it out. There are some great quotes in this article
Below are some go to the article to see all of them

A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
- D. Adams

Precise language is not the problem. Clear language is the problem.
- R. Feynman

The inside of a computer is as dumb as hell but it goes like mad!
- R. Feynman

What I cannot create I do not understand.
- R. Feynman

Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
- R. Fowler, "Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code"

640K [of main memory] ought to be enough for anybody.
- W. Gates (Founder and CEO Microsoft), 1981 - disclaimed

A great lathe operator commands several times the wage of an average lathe operator, but a great writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer.
- W. Gates

The best way to prepare [to be a programmer] is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and fished out listings of their operating systems.
- W. Gates

We flew down weekly to meet with IBM, but they thought the way to measure software was the amount of code we wrote, when really the better the software, the fewer lines of code.
- W. Gates

Kevin Rose (Digg, Diggnation and Revision3) Interview

Gadgetell has an interview with Kevin Rose from Digg.com, Diggnation and Revision3 . The first time I heard about Kevin Rose was from the TWIT (This Week In Tech) podcasts. It is a very interesting article. Kevin answer question about what made digg big ( Paris Hilton cellphone incident ) , venture capital funding, how many employees they have (and yes they are still hiring ). Kevin also points out that digg is a proud LAMP site. (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP)
Click here to go to the article

Criticize Digg/Reddit Rip-off Shoutwire And Your Posts Are Removed

I went to this site Shoutwire and decided to try it out
I put 2 posts on Shoutwire one that was a link to Google Interview Questions and the other was a link to SQL Server Tips, Tricks and Performance Tuning. My first impression of the site was that it was just a complete Digg and reddit rip-off, but I wanted to try it out and see what would happen. I did get a couple of hits here and there but nothing special.
A couple of days later I blogged about Shoutwire and Blogreporter being digg and reddit rip-offs. Then some person left a coment that I was a moron and that shoutwire just started the other day and that’s why nobody is using it yet. So anyway I checked Shouwire this morning to see what was going on and surprise…my posts are gone. First I thought maybe they remove them after 2 weeks or so but then I checked and saw posts that were 10 weeks old. Needless to say that I won’t go to that site again, first of all the site is a complete copy and second they remove posts from people who criticize them, what a losers

Giant Octopus Attack On Sub In B.C.

Salmon researchers working on the Brooks Peninsula were shocked last November when an octopus attacked their expensive and sensitive equipment.

The giant Pacific octopus weighs about 45 kilograms, powerful enough to damage Mike Wood's remote-controlled submarine.
Wood's first reaction was to panic, knowing the marine creature can exert a powerful bite.
"I go full reverse and blast him with all these seabed particles," said Wood, describing the attack shown in the video. "Finally, he lets go and disappears off into the gloom.
"It was desperation. It's a $200,000 machine, and it's not insured," said Wood, who runs SubOceanic Sciences Canada in Duncan, B.C.

Read the rest here

Google Advertising Tools : Cashing in with AdSense, AdWords, and the Google APIs

When it comes to advertising on the web, you just can't argue with the numbers. A $7 billion market today is expected to grow to $18.9 billion by 2010. Jupiter Research also estimates that search advertising will be a larger share of the market than display advertising by 2010. These phenomenal numbers are due largely to Google, which has changed the way the world publishes content - and advertises.

Google Advertising Tools from O'Reilly examines the business and technology behind making money with content and advertising on the web. This focused, easy-to-read guide shows you how to use Google's advertising services to make it happen. You'll find all the background information you need to work with Google AdSense, which automatically delivers text and image ads that are precisely targeted to your site, and Google AdWords, which lets you generate text ads that accompany specific search term results.

This book has specific and detailed sections on:
Turning your web site into a profit center with AdSense
Making sense of AdSense metrics
Driving traffic to your site
Optimizing sites for search engine placement
Working with AdWords campaigns, auctions, and reports
Managing campaigns dynamically using the AdWords APIs

Once you've read all four parts, you'll have a comprehensive picture of how advertising works on the web and how you can use the Google advertising programs to your advantage.


Get the Working with AdSense sample chapter here
Amazon link is here

Utilize The Power Of Web 2.0 To Drive Traffic To Your Site

This is an account of how I used web2.0 sites to drive traffic to this site

This site used to get between 100 and 200 hits a day mainly because of searches and by using the blog traffic exchange sites. When I submitted the page to digg and reddit I got 4000 hits in 1 day, I would say that is a nice increase and there are a couple of blogs that are linking here now because of that. The page that I submitted is about Google interview questions. The link to that page is here

If you go to the page you will actually see that there are a bunch of people who left comments and some of these people actually went back and forth trying to prove someone else's answer is incorrect. Some people actually suggested that I broke Google's non disclosure agreement which of course is not true since I have never gone to the interview and have not signed any kind of agreement.

So let me first start by explaining how I used the traditional sites to drive traffic, Before I do that let me tell you about my other blog. My other blog is a SQL Server blog and to drive traffic to that blog I participate in SQL Server newsgroups and SQL Server forums. I will answer people's questions and have my SQL blog as part of my signature. For this blog I do not use the same method since this blog has nothing to do with SQL server and thus probably will not interest those people

Traditional web
For this blog I use the following traffic generators

Blogexplosion
Good site, once you start surfing you will see hits within a minute or two. Also a lot of free credits I have 'won' 100 credits several times

Blogsoldiers
Another good blog traffic exchange site with even more free credits than blogexplosion

Blogazoo
Not as many free credits but still a good site. You also get hits seconds after you start surfing


The problem with these 3 sites is that it's tedious and you have to browse a lot of sites to get some traffic. Another problem is that you see the same sites over and over
Another way to generate traffic is to leave comments on other blogs and people will usually check out you blog once you leave a comment
If you write something really interesting other blogs/sites will link to you and this is of course the best way to increase traffic
Enough about this and let's go to web 2.0 stuff


WEB 2.0
Below is a list of the sites that I submitted the story too and additionaly a list of other sites and readers that I got hits from

Digg
I submitted the story on digg, got about 500 hits and 9 people dugg the site. I am still getting about 10 hits a day

Reddit
Reddit was the big one I got about 4000 hits and 110 people voted for the site, still getting about 10 hits a day

Fark and TotalFark
About a day after I submitted on reddit the site appeared on fark and totalfark. The total traffic from these 2 sites was about 100 hits

Simpy
After submission I got only a couple of hits

Ning
With Ning it's the same story as with Simpy, after submission only a couple of hits

Shoutwire
The 'fake' digg, same here only a couple of hits and 2 people 'shouted' the story
Then again shoutwire is not that popular

Blogreporter
A couple of hits, blogreporter doesn't look like a high traffic site

Del.icio.us
After submission to reddit 16 people shared the link

Yahoo my web 2.0
The link was submitted by someone else and I got around 50 hits


RSS readers
Live.com, Bloglines Google RSS reader
I got some hits from people who probably subscribed to the reddit RSS feeds


The big question?
Why did the story it make it to number 5 on reddit but it failed on digg? Is it the time of day that the story was submitted (1 PM on digg versus 8 PM on reddit)? I also have to point out that I submitted the page in programming instead of technology; it might have had a better change if I submitted it in technology. This of course is speculation and I will never know. Hopefully this can help you to get an idea of how to use using some of the web2.0 sites to increase traffic to your site or blog



Google interview questions links on the Web 2.0 sites
Digg
Shoutwire
Del.icio.us
Reddit should be the first one


Some of the blogs that have linked to Google interview questions
Juventuz.net
damox
eclairs

The Eclipse Foundation has announced Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) 2.0

An open source business intelligence (BI) project has been updated for PHP developers attracting - in the process - support of Zend Technologies.
The Eclipse Foundation has announced Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) 2.0, which has been extended to support cascading style sheets (CSS).

Zend, which last year worked with IBM, Intel, Oracle and SAP over optimization of PHP, particularly welcomed support for CSS. Co-founder Andi Gutmans said CSS would make BIRT 2.0 "an attractive tool for broad adoption by the 2.5 million PHP developers."
PHP has seen something of a revival among developers in recent years, particularly those in business and enterprise shops, as it is deployed as part of the low-cost Linux, Apache and MySQL operating system, web and database stack. Also announcing support for BIRT were Actuate, IBM, Pentaho and Scapa Technologies.


New and Notable BIRT 2.0

General
New BIRT Viewer
JavaScript/Java Events And Report Debugging
Runtime Data Source Property Binding
Chart Builder and SVG Output
Templates
Libraries
XML ODA
URL Builder
Multi-pass Aggregate, Sorting and Filtering
Improved Report Performance and PDF Fidelity
Dynamic Parameters/Cascading Parameters
Expression Builder
Importing of Style Sheets
Report XML Editor
Passing of External Object to Custom Data Sources
Stored ProceduresCLOB/BLOB Support

Microsoft Sparkle: A Flash Killer?

Microsoft Tuesday released new previews of its upcoming tools for designers. Microsoft Interactive Designer is a product for building Avalon ("Windows Presentation Foundation" or WPF) user interfaces.
These tools have been dubbed a Flash killer by some industry watchers, as it is expected to compete head-to-head with the Macromedia Flash product that was acquired by Adobe Systems last year.

Last month Microsoft released a preview of its design tool for its upcoming Windows Presentation Foundation subsystem, also known as Avalon.
Known as "Cider", Microsoft's Visual Designer for the Windows Presentation Foundation is set to be part of Visual Studio "Orcas," the next major release of Microsoft's Visual Studio tool suite, which is expected to support Windows Vista development. Orcas is slated for release in 2007.

Read the rest here

Boo.com Ready For June Relaunch

Boo.com - the high profile fashion flop that blew megabucks before going titsup within months of launching - could be about to make a dotcom comeback.

A short message on boo.com's homepage claims that a new site will be launched in June and that a "new website is coming soon". Attempts to contact fashionmall.com - which acquired the boo.com name and website in June 2000 - have so far proved unsuccessful

read the rest of the story here

XMLHttpRequest, Make Asynchronous Requests With JavaScript And Ajax

IBM has posted their second Mastering Ajax article named: Mastering Ajax, Part 2: Make asynchronous requests with JavaScript and Ajax.
These are the parts of the article

Web 2.0 at a glance
This part explains what web 2.0 is and gives example of sites that are part of it

Introducing XMLHttpRequest
This part is a small introduction to XMLHttpRequest and shows how to use the following methods and properties
open(): Sets up a new request to a server.
send(): Sends a request to a server.
abort(): Bails out of the current request.
readyState: Provides the current HTML ready state.
responseText: The text that the server sends back to respond to a request.
It also explains how do deal with Microsoft browsers

Sending requests with XMLHttpRequest
This part deals with opening and sending requests and also how to set a callback method. There is also a teaser on asynchronicity

Handling server responses
This part is about callbacks, HTTP ready states (see below)
0: The request is uninitialized (before you've called open()).
1: The request is set up, but hasn't been sent (before you've called send()).
2: The request was sent and is being processed (you can usually get content headers from the response at this point).
3: The request is being processed; often some partial data is available from the response, but the server hasn't finished with its response.
4: The response is complete; you can get the server's response and use it.

In conclusion
Article Conclusion

Resources
A couple of links to learn, get products and technologies and discuss Ajax
If you are a developer and are using or planning to use Ajax then this is a must read

Apple Almost Moved to SPARC

Apple is using Intel processors now instead of the PowerPC chips from IBM and Freescale Semiconductor. But another processor choice came to light Wednesday when Sun Microsystems cofounder Bill Joy revealed that Sun's Sparc chips were in the running during the last Apple switch, when it was moving off Motorola's 680x0 family.

"We got very close to having Apple use Sparc. That almost happened," Joy said at a panel discussion featuring reminiscences by Sun's four cofounders at the Computer History Museum here.

Disney Buys Pixar

It appears a great deal of speculation over Disney's buyout of Pixar Animation Studios is in fact true. From the article: "[Pixar] is set to meet tomorrow to approve the company's $7bn (£3.9bn) takeover by Disney. The all-share deal will make Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, around $3.5bn and the single largest shareholder in Disney. Jobs created Pixar in 1986 when he paid $10m for the computer animations division of Lucasfilm, owned by Star Wars creator George Lucas.
Despite the impending takeover of Pixar, Robert Iger, the chief executive of Disney, pledged in November that "animation is, and will remain, at the heart and soul of Disney".

HP Attacks Sun Via Solaris

HP has gone really, really public about its support for Sun Microsystems Solaris 10 operating system by sending out an internal memo.

HP has long "officially" supported various versions of Solaris on its Xeon- and Opteron-based servers. Now, however, it's kind of ready to talk about this support. The company this week "announced" support of Sun's version of Unix in a statement to staff, according to insiders.
The Solaris embrace is being pitched as HP's answer to disgruntled Sun customers trying to make their way off SPARC systems and onto HP's x86 kit.

"As HP is recognized as the leading supplier of standards-based servers, many Sun customers are approaching HP to help them make the transition," an HP spokesman told us. "Specifically in the entry-level UNIX server space, many Sun customers are looking to transition from under-performing SPARC systems running Solaris to better price/performance of an HP x86 platform running Linux.

"However, as we know, many of these customers have a large installed base of legacy technologies. They have invested in people and processes to run, manage and support this technology. Therefore, they are seeking help from HP to smooth the transition from a proprietary Solaris platform to HP standards-based servers by enabling some legacy Solaris environments during the transition."

Read the rest here

wxPython 2.6.2.1 Released

Download it here

Some of the Changes:

wxMSW: Fix for bug #1211907, popup menu indenting inconsistent with bitmaps.

wxMac: Don't send an event for wx.RadioButton deselections, just the selections. This was done to make it consistent with the other platforms.

wxMSW: Always set flat toolbar style, even under XP with themes: this is necessary or separators aren't shown at all.

Fixes for bug #1217872, pydocview.DocService not correctly initialized.

Fix for bug #1217874, Error in parameter name in DocManager.CreateView.

Added wrappers for the wx.RendererNative class.

Added the wx.lib.splitter module, which contains the MultiSplitterWindow class. This class is much like the standard wx.SplitterWindow class, except it allows more than one split, so it can manage more than two child windows.