Who said computers have to be all work and no play? Software developer and author Ed Burnette shares his unique view of industry trends, technologies, and personalities.
Ed Burnette is a software industry veteran with more than 25 years of experience as a programmer, author, and speaker. He has written numerous technical articles and books, most recently "Hello, Android: Introducing Google's Mobile Development Platform" from the Pragmatic Programmers.
Slow source code access and problems transferring projects from SourceForge have plagued Google Code hosting in its first week of operation, but Google engineers worked through the weekend to correct the problems. Developers seemed willing to cut Google some slack on the new service thanks in large part to participation on the user forum by Google engineers.
This week, Google announced a new open source hosting service that could finally provide a real choice. I decided to take a closer look and create my own project on the site (see image gallery). SourceForge isn't going away, but now it faces some serious competition. It's about time.
The Google Web Toolkit (GWT) team is readying a new version of the hybrid Ajax/Java framework for early August. This release will include fixes for bugs on the issues list, plus several new enhancements. In addition, Google has added another full time person to the development team. The added staff, plus release announcements, should put to rest any doubts about Google's commitment to the project.
From the "when life gives you lemons..." desk, Flickr has managed to turn a potential public relations disaster into a fun activity. For a few hours on Wednesday, the popular photo sharing site was unavailable. But in a stroke of genius, flickr operators gave all the millions of displaced users something to do during the down time - a coloring contest. Here are some of my favorites out of over 1,000 entries submitted.
It's 8am and I'm sitting in a room with about 150 guys (and a couple of women) at the Red Hat campus in Raleigh, NC. So what would get me up so early in the morning on a Saturday? BarCampRDU. I'll be updating this entry throughout the day as I go to the sessions and learn more.
Microsoft has outlined a new corporate philosophy of competition that could be summed up in these familiar words: "Don't be evil". While speaking at the New America Foundation luncheon, Brad Smith, the general counsel of Microsoft outlined the "Windows Principles": Twelve tenets that will govern Microsoft's approach to competition in the future, even after the US anti-trust ruling expires next year.
The blogosphere is all abuzz about the Microsoft/XenSource deal, praising Microsoft for trying to "get along" with Linux. Has anybody but me actually read the press release? It doesn't seem like XenSource gets very much out of it.
Mention the name "Erich Gamma" and what comes to mind? Patterns? Unit Testing? Eclipse? In his relatively short career, Erich has had a profound impact on the way software is developed, earning him a spot among "The People Who Shape Technology"...
Wirelexsoft has announced VistaFei, an Eclipse-based visual IDE for Ajax web development using the Google Web Toolkit (GWT). The first release of VistaFei provides a graphical Web UI Builder and a Remote Procedure Call (RPC) designer.
Just 4 days after I heaped praise on free Sysinternals utilities like Process Explorer and Filemon, Microsoft has bought the company and hired its two founders, Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell. No word yet on whether the popular toolkit will continue to be maintained and improved.