Daily IT Readings

Snow

2011-12-30T23:00:00.000+02:00

Dionysos speaks

2010-06-04T11:06:00.001+03:00

Behind the time when dogwood starts to flower
I work and dance inside long changing days
to find the taste, the marrow of the hour
and twist it like a snake into a phrase
that stings with all the passion of a kiss
and smiles with anger in a lying mask
behind your back and turning in your wrist:
I give you back in blood the thing you ask.

-- Kathleen Raine

Brainspeed

2010-02-08T13:56:00.000+02:00

GoalBit - Open Source P2P Streaming

2009-10-05T23:09:00.002+03:00

A group of Uruguay-based P2P researchers recently released an open-source P2P streaming application,GoalBit. It is available for Linux and Windows.

GoalBit is a peer to peer distribution system, capable of distributing high-bandwidth live-content to all network peers preserving its quality. This project follows a bittorrent-like approach where the stream is decomposed into several flows sent by different peers to each client. In order to meassure the peers perceived quality, it is used the recently proposed PSQA (Pseudo-Subjective Quality Assessment) technology.

Backup your Friendfeed with PHP and MongoDB - Part 2

2009-08-11T11:38:00.002+03:00

I just learned that FriendFeed will be acquired by Facebook. So, I will post the backup script, reworked, so you can back up your items.



class FriendFeed {
 
public $mongo;
public $collection;
public $mondo_db_name           = 'ff';
public $mongo_db_collection     = 'items';
public $ff_username             = 'YOUR_FRIENDFEED_USERNAME';

function __construct(){
 //Set up connection to Mongo
 $this->mongo = new Mongo();
 $this->collection = $this->mongo->selectDB( $this->mondo_db_name )->selectCollection( $this->mongo_db_collection );
 $this->collection->ensureIndex( array( "id" => 1 ) );
}

/**
* This function constructs the FF url which reads the user's feed.
* It reads $num messages starting from the $start message.
*/
private function getUrl($start, $num){
 return "http://friendfeed-api.com/v2/feed/".$this->ff_username."?start=$start&num=$num&fof=1&maxcomments=100";
}

/**
* Reads $num messages starting from the $start message.
* It seems like $num=100 is the maximum supported by FF.
*/
public function read($start=0, $num=100){
 $json = file_get_contents($this->getUrl($start,$num));
 return self::conv_obj(json_decode($json));
}

/**
* This function converts the FF json to array.
*/
public static function conv_obj($data){
 if(!is_object($data) && !is_array($data)) return $data;
 if(is_object($data)) $data = get_object_vars($data);
 return array_map(array('FriendFeed','conv_obj'), $data);
}

/**
* This function reads $num messages and inserts them in mongodb
*/
public function update($start=0,$num=100){
 $data = $this->read($start,$num);
 //Process the FF data, updating Mongo with each item
 if (!empty($data))
  foreach ($data['entries'] as $entry){
   //upsert the item in mongo
   $this->collection->update(array("id" => $entry['id']), $entry, true);
  }
}

}

$ff = new FriendFeed();

/*//UNCOMMENT BELOW TO DO BACKUP
$max_num_items = 1600; //change this if you have more items
foreach (range(0,intval($max_num_items/100)) as $i) $ff->update(100*$i);
//*/


/*//UNCOMMENT BELOW TO LIST YOUR 10 LATEST ENTRIES
$cursor = $ff->collection->find()->sort(array( "date" => -1 ))->limit(10);

foreach ($cursor as $value) {
    echo $value['date'].' ('.$value['via']['name'].'): '.html_entity_decode($value['body'])."\n";
}
//*/
?>

Backup your Friendfeed with PHP and MongoDB

2009-08-05T16:47:00.004+03:00

I wanted to backup my FriendFeed (FF), because... well, because it backs up a lot of my social activities. So this is the first attempt. I will use MongoDB because it works naturally with JSON, which suits my needs just fine. I will also use PHP.

What follows is dead simple. First a crude wrapper for accessing FF.


class FriendFeed {
   private $user;

   function __construct($user){
       $this->user=$user;
   }

   /**
    * This function constructs the FF url which reads the user's feed.
    * It reads $num messages starting from the $start message.
    */
   private function getUrl($start, $num){
       return "http://friendfeed-api.com/v2/feed/".$this->user."?start=$start&num=$num";
   }

   /**
    * Reads $num messages starting from the $start message.
    * It seems like $num=100 is the maximum supported by FF.
    */
   public function read($start=1, $num=100){
       $json = file_get_contents($this->getUrl($start,$num));
       return self::conv_obj(json_decode($json));
   }

   /**
    * This function converts the FF json to array.
    */
   public static function conv_obj($data){
       if(!is_object($data) && !is_array($data)) return $data;
       if(is_object($data)) $data = get_object_vars($data);
       return array_map(array('FriendFeed','conv_obj'), $data);
   }
}

This wrapper only reads the FF entries and decodes them to array. Now lets use it to read 100 entries and insert them in MongoDB.

//CONFIGURATION
$mondo_db_name = 'YOUR_MONGO_DB_NAME';
$mongo_db_collection = 'YOUR_MONGO_COLLECTION_NAME';
$ff_username = 'FriendFeed_USERNAME';

//Set up connection to Mongo
$m = new Mongo();
$collection = $m->selectDB( $mondo_db_name )->selectCollection( $mongo_db_collection );
$collection->ensureIndex( array( "id" => 1 ) );

//Read data from FF
$ff = new FriendFeed($ff_username);
$data = $ff->read();

//Process the FF data, updating Mongo with each item
if (!empty($data))
   foreach ($data['entries'] as $entry){
       //output new items
       if (!$collection->findOne(array("id" => $entry['id'])))
           echo $entry['date'].":".$entry['body']."\n";

       //upsert the item in mongo
       $collection->update(array("id" => $entry['id']), $entry, true);
   }


//Output number of items in collection
$collcnt = $collection->count();
echo $collcnt."\n";

Make this run once per hour or once per day and you will have a local copy of your FF stream. Of course, this will not download photos and files. I may add an extension for this in the future, in case I need it.

If you need to cycle through all your local FF items:

$cursor = $collection->find();
$cursor = $cursor->sort( array( "date" => 1 ) );

foreach ($cursor as $id => $value) {
   var_dump( $value );
}

If you need to backup all your items, you need to replace $data = $ff->read(); and the code that follows with something like this:

while ($data = $ff->read($start)) {
   //processing code
   $start+=100;
}

This code (without the while loop) has been tested and works both on Linux and Windows, with PHP 5.3 and MongoDB 0.9.7.

Deioces

2009-03-25T14:42:00.002+02:00

The following story by Herodotus reminds me so much of current politics.

According to Herodotus, the Medes lived independently (autonomon) in scattered villages after they won their freedom from the Assyrians. Ambitious to unite the Medes under his rule, Deioces set about gaining a reputation for honesty. The men in his village grew to trust him and invited him to settle their disputes. As his reputation grew, more and more people submitted their disputes to him until he ﬁnally declared he had had enough and would judge no more lawsuits. His withdrawal plunged the country into lawlessness (anomia) and forced the Medes to make him king. Once in oﬃce, Deioces demanded that his subjects build him a vast palace at Ecbatana. When the palace was complete, Deioces remained inside to keep himself safe from plots and communicated with his people through messengers. He continued to judge lawsuits, but all cases were now submitted to him in writing so that he could keep his distance from the people.

excerpt from "Solon of Athens New Historical and Philological Approaches", Mnemosyne, Supplements, 272, Brill Publishing, 2006

Building a Personal Filtered RSS Reader with Oracle XE and Apatar - Part 2

2009-02-10T10:54:00.002+02:00

This is the second part of my post about building an RSS Reader with Oracle and Apatar. If you have all the prerequisites mentioned in the previous post in place, let's proceed with the database schema. It is actually just one table:

CREATE TABLE "FEEDHUB" (
"POSTDATE" DATE NOT NULL,
"TITLE" VARCHAR2(512 CHAR),
"SCORE" NUMBER, --the feedhub score of the post or null
"URL" VARCHAR2(1000 CHAR) NOT NULL,
"POSTRANK" NUMBER, --the postrank score of the post or null
"AUTO_ID" NUMBER,
CONSTRAINT "FEEDHUB_PK" PRIMARY KEY ("URL")
)

It combines both my Feedhub and Postrank feeds. This is enough to define the Apatar transformations which will load RSS posts into the table automatically.

Next start Apatar, modify this transformation with your feeds and database connection, and you are good to go. Each run will load the new rss entries into the database. You can also create a nice and quick web interface by using Oracle APEX. This is beyond the scope of this post, but it is really easy and should take about 20 minutes.

p.s. You can always achieve the same without installing any software - just use Yahoo Pipes.

The dumbest way to copy a file to a USB stick

2009-01-24T15:34:00.002+02:00

Let me describe my experience from last night where I had to download a 400MB file and copy it to a USB stick. This is one of the dumbest things I've ever done on a computer. Do not repeat it at home.

Step 1. (Mid-morning) I found out that the file I want is 400 MB. I do not want to just go and download it because this will eat all the bandwidth and the other people sharing my Internet connection will be extremely frustrated. I have to shape my connection. Well, I was running Windows and I don't know how to do this on Windows so I fired up Virtualbox where I have a Debian virtual machine (VM). I shape eth0 to 24KB and am good to go.

Step 2. (Late afternoon) I remembered my download - the file is there. It has to go to the USB stick. After two minutes I am cursing Virtualbox for making it so difficult to connect a USB device. After another 3 minutes and 2 restarts of the VM I give up.

Step 3. (One cigarette later) I set up the USB stick as a shared folder in Virtualbox. Then "modprobe vboxfs" and mount it... Now I have access to my stick from within VM. I start copying the file...................... A minute later I understand my mistake, the speed of transfer is 150 KB/s, on average. I curse... in Serbian :)

Step 4. (Evening) It is already dark outside. The file is on the USB stick. Finally. I test it - it opens from Windows. I carefully unmount everything, bag the stick and go.

Step 5. (Next morning, at home) I try to open the USB stick on my laptop. Vista says it wants to format it. I curse Vista.

Step 6. (At the office) My PC at last! Debian, no VMs. I insert the USB stick. Nothing happens. fsck.vfat says it's bad, the partition table is corrupted. I try for an hour to copy (dd) the contents somewhere so I can mount it on the loopback and eventually fdisk in. Nope. I curse my stupidity...

As I said don't try this at home.

Automated Game Design

2009-01-19T13:42:00.001+02:00

A very interesting post in togelius explores the concepts of automated game design. The novel concept here is that it proposes a learning algorithm to be used as a fitness function for the generated games.

Somewhat more technically, our fitness function proceeds in two stages: first it tries to play the game using only random actions. If a random player can win a the game, the ruleset (=the game) is assigned a negative fitness. Otherwise, an evolutionary algorithm is used to try to learn a neural network that plays the game (using the score of the game as fitness function). The fitness of the game then becomes the best fitness found by the "inner" evolutionary algorithm after a certain number of generations.

There are also other interesting resources on this topic like this article, or this older one which explores the automatic generation of dungeons for computer games.

Building a Personal Filtered RSS Reader with Oracle XE and Apatar

2009-01-18T12:55:00.000+02:00

Today I will show you how to build a personal, filtered, web-based RSS reader with free tools and no programming (except simple SQL). I will not go into too many details so that you can have fun experimenting with the tools. Before we start you will need:

A list of the URLs of your favorite feeds - the more the better because we will be filtering the content. High-profile, popular RSS feeds will work better with the filtering I propose. OPML format will be best.
Oracle XE - it's free to use. You might also want to install Oracle SQL Developer - it will make developing databases easier.
Apatar - This is a FOSS ETL tool which we will use to transform the RSS feed items and automatically import them in the database.

In order to have filtering you should use the Feedhub , Postrank or Feedscrub services. In my example I used the first two. Please note that Feedhub and Feedscrub need some "training" in order to work well. After you've registered for these services import your feed list in them and get the URLs of the personalized RSS feeds they provide. You will need those shortly.

In the next post we will create the database and Apatar transformations.

Fun with Oracle and the Dow Jones

2008-12-16T21:23:00.003+02:00

I have written an article describing my explorations in the world of Oracle. I actually started learning Oracle two days before I wrote this article. So if you find that some of the things in it are not done in the best way, you can leave a comment. Before starting you will need of course an Oracle server. You can get the free version - Oracle XE. You might also want to install Oracle SQL Developer. A good knowledge of general SQL is also necessary.

The main question I explore is can we use Oracle to tell us when the financial crisis started?

p.s. Of course, the PostgreSQL fans can try and repeat the steps from the article in PostgreSQL, you will need 8.4dev though in order to use the analytical functions support.

p.s. PostgreSQL fans are actually out of luck, because the implementation of analytical functions does not allow for arbitrary ranges...

Google's newsest patent

2008-09-07T09:46:00.000+03:00

Google has patented a floating platform-mounted computer data center:

A system includes a floating platform-mounted computer data center comprising a plurality of computing units, a sea-based electrical generator in electrical connection with the plurality of computing units, and one or more sea-water cooling units for providing cooling to the plurality of computing units.

Long prime numbers

2008-06-07T18:51:00.001+03:00

1979339333 and 1979339339 are remarkable prime numbers. Do you know why?

Did Amazon Induce Vista's Premature Birth?

2008-02-22T09:31:00.000+02:00

A recent Amazon SEC filing sheds light on the puzzling Sept. 2006 departure of Microsoft Sr. VP Brian Valentine, the Gen. George Patton-like figure charged with pushing Vista developers, who dumped the still not-ready-for-prime-time OS into RC1 status as he bolted for a new gig at Amazon. It seems Valentine had actually signed an Employment Agreement way back in June calling for him to be on board at Amazon on Sept. 11 if he wanted to pick up a $1.7M signing bonus, $150K base salary, another $500K bonus, and 400K shares of Amazon (now worth almost $30M).

Delving into the recent PostgreSQL commits

2008-02-19T09:11:00.000+02:00

After the recent release of PostgreSQL 8.3 activity has now shifted to the future 8.4 release. Tom Lane made an interesting commit last week which removed the restriction that LIMIT/OFFSET can't contain a sub-select. You can now write queries like:

SELECT * FROM test
ORDER BY col1
LIMIT (SELECT testlimit FROM confs WHERE name='test.col1')

Well, you can do this only if you compile PostgreSQL from source, not in 8.3, but I hope it will be included into the 8.3.1 release.

Vendr Neutral SQL Certification

2008-01-28T19:07:00.000+02:00

CIW Database Design Specialist, scheduled to launch in March 2008, is the latest addition to the vendor-neutral, CIW Certification Program.

This new vendor-neutral certification focuses on universal database design principles and SQL. Aimed at database programmers and administrators alike, the exam helps solve the problem of poorly designed databases and validates foundational knowledge of any database, regardless if it’s Oracle, IBM, DB2, MySQL or others.

Flickr to host Library of Congress photos

2008-01-17T13:29:00.001+02:00

The good news is the Library of Congress is putting 3,000 images up at Flickr. The bad news is they're relying on us to tag them all.

Flickr to host Library of Congress photos | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone

Sun Microsystems Announces Agreement to Acquire MySQL

2008-01-17T11:04:00.001+02:00

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire MySQL AB, an open source icon and developer of one of the world's fastest growing open source databases for approximately $1 billion in total consideration. The acquisition accelerates Sun's position in enterprise IT to now include the $15 billion database market. Today's announcement reaffirms Sun's position as the leading provider of platforms for the Web economy and its role as the largest commercial open source contributor.

Blogged with Flock

SQL/PSM Manual

2007-11-08T10:40:00.000+02:00

I just noticed that there is a PL/pgPSM manual published. I plan to install and give it a try very, very soon, actually as soon as I install 8.3.

I wonder if all features mentioned in the manual are actually present...

Relational database pioneer says technology is obsolete

2007-09-07T12:56:00.001+03:00

As a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, in the early 1970s, Michael Stonebraker co-created the Ingres and Postgres technology that underlies many leading relational databases today: Microsoft Corp.'s SQL Server, Sybase Inc.'s Adaptive Server Enterprise, Ingres Corp.'s eponymous product, IBM's Informix, and others. But Stonebraker now argues that relational databases, also known as RDBMSes, are "long in the tooth" and "should be considered legacy technology."

Daily Bookmarks 08/17/2007

2007-08-18T04:30:00.001+03:00

Think About The Water | www.SpetroV.com

fav.or.it - Slicing the web

20% of all Yahoo page views are done with an empty cache

2007-08-17T13:26:00.001+03:00

Suprising Results

40-60% of Yahoo!’s users have an empty cache experience and ~20% of all page views are done with an empty cache. To my knowledge, there’s no other research that shows this kind of information. And I don’t know about you, but these results came to us as a big surprise. It says that even if your assets are optimized for maximum caching, there are a significant number of users that will always have an empty cache. This goes back to the earlier point that reducing the number of HTTP requests has the biggest impact on reducing response time. The percentage of users with an empty cache for different web pages may vary, especially for pages with a high number of active (daily) users. However, we found in our study that regardless of usage patterns, the percentage of page views with an empty cache is always ~20%.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Daily Bookmarks 08/16/2007

2007-08-17T04:30:00.001+03:00

WebSnapr - Website Thumbnails For Your Site

List anonymous wikipedia edits from interesting organizations

PgFoundry: pl/lolcode: Project Info

Daily Bookmarks 08/10/2007

2007-08-11T04:30:00.001+03:00

СТРАНИЦА ЗА ПРАБЪЛГАРИТЕ - ЕЗИК, ПРОИЗХОД, ИСТОРИЯ И РЕЛИГИЯ

Regexpal

Стивън Рънсиман — История на Първото българско царство (2)

Daily Bookmarks 08/09/2007

2007-08-10T04:30:00.001+03:00

blueprintcss - Google Code

Daily Bookmarks 08/03/2007

2007-08-04T04:31:00.001+03:00

Beta ContactOffice NUI
Annotated

ContactOffice Group sa 1999 - 2007
|
FF, Moz, Camino, IE, Opera. | Safari not yet supported

cool - post by farrider

Daily Bookmarks 08/02/2007

2007-08-03T04:30:00.001+03:00

StartForce

myabodo : see your world change

fleXcroll: Cross Browser Custom ScrollBar script by Hesido

Daily Bookmarks 08/01/2007

2007-08-02T04:30:00.001+03:00

once:radix - Welcome!

485 + Ajax/Javascript/Dhtml examples and demos to download

Spinner Control Demo

SIMILE | Timeplot

Timeplot is a DHTML-based AJAXy widget for plotting time series and overlay time-based events over them - post by farrider

Daily Bookmarks 07/26/2007

2007-07-27T04:30:00.001+03:00

Michael Psellus: Chronographia: Complete Text

Daily Bookmarks 07/16/2007

2007-07-17T04:30:00.001+03:00

COLONIAL AMERICA

Daily Bookmarks 07/13/2007

2007-07-14T04:30:00.001+03:00

Zimki - Home

Implementing a syntax-higlighting JavaScript editor in JavaScript

Daily Bookmarks 07/07/2007

2007-07-08T04:30:00.001+03:00

LiveStation

Interactive live TV on the PC that works! - post by farrider

Adobe - Digital Editions

Daily Bookmarks 07/06/2007

2007-07-07T04:30:00.001+03:00

Bust a Name - the easy way to find domains

Helma Javascript Web Application Framework

Helma is written in Java and employs Javascript for its server-side
scripting environment, removing the need for compilation cycles and
reducing development costs while giving you instant access to leverage
the whole wealth of Java libraries out there. - post by farrider

Daily Bookmarks 07/05/2007

2007-07-06T04:30:00.001+03:00

Silobreaker

libmyXql: XML library for MySQL

Daily Bookmarks 07/04/2007

2007-07-05T04:30:00.001+03:00

Journal of Social Structure

Atlas of the Human Journey - The Genographic Project

Saving power with Linux on Intel hardware

Intel is releasing PowerTOP, a
tool that helps you find what software is using the most power. - post by farrider

Daily Bookmarks 07/03/2007

2007-07-04T04:30:00.001+03:00

Quotiki.com - Search and Share Your Favorite Quotations

earthmine inc

ORBITER Download

Daily Bookmarks 07/02/2007

2007-07-03T04:30:00.001+03:00

Science Videos Search Engine

every science video on ScienceHack is screened by a scientist to verify its accuracy and quality - post by farrider

Sputtr.

Welcome to Zude!

Daily Bookmarks 06/22/2007

2007-06-23T04:30:00.001+03:00

PHPIDS » Web Application Security 2.0

PHPIDS (PHP-Intrusion Detection System) is a simple to use, well
structured, fast and state-of-the-art security layer for your PHP based
web application. The IDS neither strips, sanitizes nor filters any
malicious input, it simply recognizes when an attacker tries to break
your site and reacts in exactly the way you want it to. - post by farrider

DP_Debug (JavaScript Debugging Extensions)

The DP_Debug script extends JavaScript with (we think) useful debugging methods. - post by farrider

Skycache

Skycache is a free, lightweight and fast page cache for PHP 4 and PHP 5. - post by farrider

Daily Bookmarks 06/21/2007

2007-06-22T04:30:00.001+03:00

RDFa Bookmarklets

This is the home of the RDFa Javascript implementation, including the RDFa bookmarklets. - post by farrider

toot: The Arab blog network

LinuxCOE

The LinuxCOE SystemDesigner is a web application that allows a user to repeatably install, configure, and maintain Linux system installations. - post by farrider

Daily Bookmarks 06/20/2007

2007-06-21T04:30:00.001+03:00

McNett » Blog Archive » “buckytree”: an implicit data structure for O(NlogN) spatial sort & O(logN)? spatial search of dimensional objects

Daily Bookmarks 06/18/2007

2007-06-19T04:30:00.001+03:00

Qore Programming Language - Home

Daily Bookmarks 06/15/2007

2007-06-16T04:30:00.001+03:00

How to install a webdav server in PHP - Keyphrene's Blog

Katharine Kerr - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Annotated

Act four: The Silver Wyrm

The Gold Falcon (2006) - US title; issued in the UK as the fourth book of The Dragon Mage

The Spirit Stone (2007) - US title; issued in the UK as the fifth book of The Dragon Mage

The Shadow Isle (expected 2008)

да проверя в IRC - post by farrider

Daily Bookmarks 06/14/2007

2007-06-15T04:30:00.001+03:00

mybooo.com

Lumosity - Brain Fitness and Memory Improvement

Chickenfoot

Chickenfoot is a Firefox extension that puts a programming environment in the browser's sidebar
so you can write scripts to manipulate web pages and automate web browsing.
In Chickenfoot, scripts are written in a superset of Javascript
that includes special functions specific to web tasks. - post by farrider

Daily Bookmarks 06/13/2007

2007-06-14T04:30:00.001+03:00

:: Scriptovia ::

Scriptovia.com is an online community for students to collaborate and
receive feedback on their academic work. This includes essays, notes,
lab reports, presentations,

and everything else students create to advance their knowledge. - post by farrider

Mozilla-based Spider

Daily Bookmarks 06/12/2007

2007-06-13T04:30:00.001+03:00

Octopz

Advanced Online Collaboration for Creative Professionals
- post by farrider

RomeReborn1.0

Daily Bookmarks 06/11/2007

2007-06-12T04:30:00.001+03:00

Archiveopteryx

Archiveopteryx is an Internet mail server, optimised to support heavy
usage and high-volume, long-term archival. It seeks to make it practical
not only to manage large archives, but to use the information therein on
a daily basis instead of relegating it to offline storage. - post by farrider

Google acquires PeakStream

2007-06-11T11:56:00.001+03:00

Google has acquired PeakStream, a start-up that sells tools for writing software that can take advantage of multicore processors as well as graphics and gaming chips.

Daily Bookmarks 06/09/2007

2007-06-10T04:30:00.001+03:00

MediaDex

Catalog, organize, find and share your photos, audio and video files, documents,... - post by farrider

Canto Cumulus

Canto® Cumulus® digital asset management software enables work groups
to easily find, share and publish the files they need—no matter where
the files are stored, no matter what medium they're stored on. - post by farrider

Daily Bookmarks 06/08/2007

2007-06-09T04:30:00.001+03:00

Free Science and Video Lectures Online!: Programming Video Education Lectures Annotated

Advanced JavaScript (by Douglas Crockford)

Crockford винаги е интересен .. дано да остане време за гледане - post by farrider

Maintainable JavaScript (by Nicholas Zakas)
Nicholas Zakas is an engineer on the team that brings you My Yahoo!, one of the most popular personalized portals on the web. In this talk, Zakas focuses on some fundamental concepts in the world of frontend engineering with an eye toward making code more maintainable.

Maintainable JavaScript Video Lecture (Yahoo Video)

това е добре да го прегледам - post by farrider

An Inconvenient API: The Theory of the DOM [Document Object Model] (by Douglas Crockford)
Yahoo! JavaScript Architect Douglas Crockford discusses the nexus between JavaScript and the browser, exploring the history of the BOM and DOM APIs and their impact on frontend engineering today. This presentation is archived in three parts:

Crockford отново... - post by farrider

Flirt Frenzy

Flirt Frenzy is an AJAX web application that was designed so people could meet, one on one in an anonymous environment. - post by farrider

MassMirror.com - Free File Hosting And Mirroring

Daily Bookmarks 06/05/2007

2007-06-06T04:30:00.001+03:00

PHP: PHP 5 ChangeLog Annotated

Changed JSON maximum nesting depth from 20 to 128. (Rasmus)

Fixed bug #41504 (json_decode() incorrectly decodes JSON arrays with empty string keys). (Ilia)

json

Fixed bug #41403 (json_decode cannot decode floats if localeconv decimal_point is not '.'). (Tony)

Fixed bug #41067 (json_encode() problem with UTF-16 input). (jp at df5ea dot net. Ilia)

Fixed bug #41034 (json_encode() ignores null byte started keys in arrays). (Ilia)

Fixed bug #40503 (json_encode() value corruption on 32bit systems with overflown values). (Ilia)

Fixed bug #38680 (Added missing handling of basic types in json_decode). (Ilia)

Не е истина колко JSON бъга са фикснали.... - post by farrider

Coventi Pages | Getting Everyone on the Same Page

sepgsql - Google Code

Security Enhanced PostgreSQL (SE-PostgreSQL) is an extension of
PostgreSQL relational database management system, based on Security
Enhanced Linux (SELinux)'s security model and policy. It can provide
fine grained mandatory access control to various database objects such
as tables, columns or tuples and can apply consistent authority of
remote/local client integrated with operation system independent from
database authorization. - post by farrider

Daily Bookmarks 06/04/2007

2007-06-05T04:30:00.001+03:00

bliin YourLIVE! º Always There

"I am a fisherman. I fish for fish."

2007-06-04T15:25:00.001+03:00

One day while my son Christopher, who is four, was playing in front of me and his mother, we two adults began discussing the figure of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels. Christopher turned toward us for an instant and said, "I am a fisherman. I fish for fish." He was playing with a metal lantern which someone had given me, which I had never used... and suddenly I realised that the lantern was shaped like a fish. I wonder what thoughts were being placed in my little boy's soul at that moment — and not placed there by cereal merchants or candy peddlers. "I am a fisherman. I fish for fish." Christopher, at four, had found the sign I did not find until I was forty-five years old. Time is speeding up. And to what end? Maybe we were told that two thousand years ago. Or maybe it wasn't really that long ago; maybe it is a delusion that so much time has passed. Maybe it was a week ago, or even earlier today. Perhaps time is not only speeding up; perhaps, in addition, it is going to end.

How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later - Philip K. Dick, 1978

Daily Bookmarks 06/01/2007

2007-06-02T04:30:00.001+03:00

lib_mysql_json - A library of MySQL UDFs for working with JSON

A library of functions to map relational data to the
JSON format. - post by farrider

Google Gears

2007-06-01T09:44:00.001+03:00

Google has released Gears - an open source browser extension that lets developers create web applications that can run offline.

Google Gears API Developer's Guide

Daily Bookmarks 05/31/2007

2007-06-01T04:30:00.001+03:00

Second Brain™ - Organize Everything in Your Internet Library

Egnyte

Egnyte is content sharing solution that combines sharing, automatic organization and a powerful search capability. Using continuous synchronization, Egnyte seamlessly integrates the desktop with the web. - post by farrider

Famiva: Family Stories

Flowchart

Daily Bookmarks 05/30/2007

2007-05-31T04:30:00.001+03:00

OpenDOAR - Home Page - Directory of Open Access Repositories

SnapLogic Open Source Internet Data Services

SnapLogic builds integration and transformation services into the server infrastructure so that data contained in databases and applications can be integrated just like Web servers are added to the Internet. - post by farrider

Orgoo - Your communication... integrated

AjaxDaddy

Daily Bookmarks 05/29/2007

2007-05-30T04:30:00.001+03:00

home · LOLCODE

I'll speak at WebTech 2007

2007-05-29T09:18:00.000+03:00

The 4th Internet technologies conference will take place from June 29 till 30 th in the Bulgarian seaside at city of Varna. I will speak about some advanced features of PostgreSQL - here is the preliminary summary of my talk:

This presentation will briefly cover some of the advanced features in PostgreSQL. Topics will include (but will not be limited to):

- transactions
- concurrency control
- domains
- composite types
- aggregate functions
- operators and operator families
- cursors
- partitioning
- XML data
- procedural languages, etc.

Particular attention will be paid to the functionality introduced in PostgreSQL versions 8.0 and later. The focus will be on presenting as many features as possible, with examples, without going into any level of detail. At the end of the presentation, some of the interesting features planned for future releases of PostgreSQL will be discussed. The whole presentation will be entirely developer-oriented and no administration and performance topics will be touched. There will also be no comparisons with other popular database systems.

The expected time-frame is 40 min. and the language of the presentation will be Bulgarian, even though the slides will probably be in English.

Daily Bookmarks 05/28/2007

2007-05-29T04:30:00.001+03:00

Haiku Operating System

Daily Bookmarks 05/22/2007

2007-05-23T04:30:00.001+03:00

LineBuzz.com - Inline Blog Comments

solutoire.com | Plotr

Operator11 — Become a net-star!

TalentSpring Candidates

Daily Bookmarks 05/18/2007

2007-05-19T04:30:00.001+03:00

IBDOM: Injecting JavaScript Data Objects into HTML Documents via the DOM

Mike Davidson - sIFR 2.0: Rich Accessible Typography for the Masses

duck_typer - Automating JS behavior registration

PostgreSQL improvement project - Ljudmila

Daily Bookmarks 05/15/2007

2007-05-16T04:30:00.001+03:00

Scalable BLOB Streaming Infrastructure for MySQL

Twitter Maintenance Screen

2007-05-15T18:31:00.000+03:00

Scalable BLOB Streaming Infrastructure for MySQL

2007-05-15T10:04:00.000+03:00

I just came across a very intersting MYSQL project:

The Scalable BLOB Streaming infrastructure for MySQL will transform MySQL into a scalable media server capable of streaming pictures, films, MP3 files and other binary and text objects (BLOBs) directly in and out of the database.

Daily Bookmarks 05/14/2007

2007-05-15T04:30:00.001+03:00

Attency, the attractive aggregator

Cebase.com ~ Web-based database to manage and share your data

MEDgle - search your symptoms

Daily Bookmarks 05/11/2007

2007-05-12T04:30:00.001+03:00

PostgreSQL Conference Attendees

Tito Software - Leader in javascript debugger and profiler

Tito Web Studio is a feature rich and extremely effective quality assurance tool for web developers and QA analyst. This enterprise grade software consists of JavaScript debuging and profiling functions. - post by farrider

Second Brain™ - Organize Everything in Your Internet Library - Apply For Test Pilot Access

Daily Bookmarks 05/09/2007

2007-05-10T04:30:00.001+03:00

The Tagdb Archives

Daily Bookmarks 05/08/2007

2007-05-09T04:30:00.001+03:00

Timothy M. Chan's Publications

Daily Bookmarks 05/07/2007

2007-05-08T04:31:00.001+03:00

BlogBackupOnline

blog backup - 50 MB - post by farrider

Daily Bookmarks 05/04/2007

2007-05-05T04:30:00.001+03:00

Tonic: A RESTful Web App Development Framework

Tonic is an open source less is more, RESTful Web application development and Web site management PHP script designed to do things "the right way", where resources are king and the framework gets out of the way and leaves the developer to get on with it. - post by farrider

Daily Bookmarks 04/28/2007

2007-04-29T04:30:00.001+03:00

Devprom

уеб-базирана система за управление на проекти
- post by farrider

JsonML (JSON Markup Language)

A List Apart Web Design Survey

2007-04-25T14:56:00.000+03:00

Understanding Security

2007-04-12T16:24:00.000+03:00

It's physically impossible to securely remove plaintext data on a magnetic medium without destroying the media. The data is always there, no matter how many times you write over it because there is more than one atom involved on the part of the medium where a given bit is written, and you never change the magnetic properties of all the atoms involved in storing that given bit.

A well funded attacker will be able to recover every bit of data ever written to the medium, and establish chronological order of writes per bit on the disk. The number of times you overwrite or otherwise wipe the files is irrelevant

Also, random data is a less secure means of obscuring existing data than random actual day to day files because the entropy of the data you're trying to hide, and the entropy of the noise you're using to cover it up with differ so greatly. With a chronological record of the bits written in a volume (given, only available to the most sophisticated and well funded attacker), and a search for entropy, it is a quite simple task to recover any data that was ever represented on the media.

These tools only obscure the data from poorly funded, inept attackers. If those are who concern you given your threat model, then OK. Else the NSA is having a great belly laugh at your expense.

If you would like true file security, you need a cryptographic filesystem on a fresh drive. Ensure that the keys to decrypt said partition and your passphrase are stored on a separate media (cd-r perhaps) which you can shred using a cross-cut shredder (one that makes fingernail clipping sized chunks) before being burned.

Keep this disk on you at all times, or be able to account for it at all times. Your reaction time for removing your key media, turning off your machine, shredding and then burning said media must be less than the time between your detecting an attacker on the premises and their reaching the machine.

Your browser cache, saved emails and chat logs can be used as cribs to crack the encryption on your partition. never write them to disk, even in encrypted form.

In general, never write plaintext to your hard drive, and keep the keys off of your hard drive if keeping people from reading data that was ever at any time written to it is important to you.

Children 2-14 Playing Games, Downloading Content

2007-01-22T10:21:00.000+02:00

"The NPD Group, which also tracks the monthly video game industry sales data in North America, has released findings from an online survey titled Kids & Digital Content, which found that children as young as 2 years old are playing video games and downloading digital content."

"Specifically, respondents reported that children spend an average of 44 minutes per sitting playing video games, and nearly the same amount of time listening to downloaded music on portable electronics. In addition, the report found that 15 percent of children between the ages of 2 and 5 years old are using cell phones, while the percentage jumps to 62 percent when looking at those children between 11 and 14 years old."

Open Source Catalogue 2007

2007-01-18T14:04:00.001+02:00

The benefits of open source are being understood more and more in enterprise IT. There is rarely an organization or an enterprise that doesn’t use open source products and technologies today. IT managers who are asked about barriers and issues that would limit their use of open source typically mention support and license topics. However one of the most relevant problems they face is the lack of knowledge on open source solutions and their ability to fulfill enterprise needs. There are more than 140,000 open source projects in existence. It is not simple to keep an overview and to separate out the pearls.

The objective of Optaros’ Open Source Catalogue 2007 is to give IT decision makers navigation support by listing the most relevant, useful and enterprise-ready open source platforms, components, frameworks and solutions in an easy-to-read overview. The catalogue lists some 260 “projects” in four software categories (operating systems and infrastructure, application development and infrastructure, infrastructure solutions and business applications). The selection and the rating system is based on the experience of Optaros’ worldwide consulting and integration work force, substantial research and evaluations, as well as interaction with open source communities and companies.

PGDoc 0.1 Released

2006-12-29T17:35:00.000+02:00

I have just released the first version of PGDoc.

PGDoc is a small Perl utility which automatically generates pretty HTML documentation for any PostgreSQL database. It runs through the system tables and collects information about database objects and relationships and creates an HTML page. The format of the HTML may be customized by altering the template and/or the css file.

PGDoc is a fork of PostgreSQL Autodoc. It adds a few new features and removes a host of other features.

Please note that I am not a Perl programmer. I had never written a single line of Perl in my life before I started working on PGDoc. I also haven't read a single line of documentation - so do not expect quality Perl code, but you can expect it to work.

Nowthen

2006-12-26T18:21:00.000+02:00

nowthen beta

"nowthen lets you capture your life as it's happening and save it for the future.

It's hard to keep a diary when you're on the go, but that doesn't mean you should forget the finer details of life. nowthen solves this problem by allowing you to use your camera phone to record the things you see and do!"

Blogged with Flock

Wikipedia to purchase copyrights?

2006-10-23T09:27:00.000+03:00

Jimmy Wales has recently asked:

I would like to gather from the community some examples of works you would like to see made free, works that we are not doing a good job of generating free replacements for, works that could in theory be purchased and freed.

Dream big. Imagine there existed a budget of $100 million to purchase copyrights to be made available under a free license. What would you like to see purchased and released under a free license?

Photos libraries? textbooks? newspaper archives? Be bold, be specific, be general, brainstorm, have fun with it.

I was recently asked this question by someone who is potentially in a position to make this happen, and he wanted to know what we need, what we dream of, that we can't accomplish on our own, or that we would expect to take a long time to accomplish on our own.I was recently asked this question by someone who is potentially in a position to make this happen, and he wanted to know what we need, what we dream of, that we can't accomplish on our own, or that we would.

You can also join the fun!

Microsoft Open Specification Promise

2006-09-13T22:49:00.000+03:00

Microsoft is pledging not to assert its patents pertaining to nearlythree dozen Web services specifications–a move designed to easeconcerns among developers by creating a legal environment more friendlyto open-source software….The software giant published on Tuesday the Microsoft Open Specification Promise (OSP) on its Web site.

Blogged with Flock

2006-09-07T11:43:00.000+03:00

Google has launced Archive News Search. Some of the results will require payment to the source for access and there are no Google ads on the results pages. Regular search and timeline display options are available.

R.I.P. Steve

2006-09-04T10:46:00.000+03:00

Crocodile hunter and environmentalist Steve Irwin has been killed in a freak diving accident when he was stabbed in the chest by a stingray while filming a new wildlife documentary.

This is perhaps the saddest news this year.

2006-08-13T11:54:00.000+03:00

Gartner, Inc., today announced its 2006 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle which assesses the maturity, impact and adoption speed of 36 key
technologies and trends during the next ten years. This year’s hype cycle highlights three major themes that are experiencing significant
activity and which include new or heavily hyped technologies, where organisations may be uncertain as to which will have most impact on
their business.

The discussed technologies are categorized according to their position in the hype cycle as follows:

On the Rise : DNA Logic, Tera-architectures, Quantum Computing, Prediction Markets, Augmented Reality, Offline Ajax, Speech-to-Speech Translation, Telepresence, Event-Driven Architecture, Collective Intelligence, Model-Driven Architectures

At the Peak : RSS Enterprise, Corporate Semantic Web, Speech Recognition for Mobile Devices, IPv6, Mashup, Web 2.0, Folksonomies, Digital Paper/E-Paper, Social Network Analysis

Sliding Into the Trough : RFID (Item), Grid Computing, Ajax, RFID (Case/Pallet), Biometric Payments, Wikis, Corporate Blogging, Mesh Networks: Sensor, Tablet PC, Mobile Phone Payments, Location-Aware Technology, Enterprise Instant Messaging

Climbing the Slope: Location-Aware Applications, Smartphone

Entering the Plateau : Internal Web Services, VoIP

11 Suggestions For Not Being a Dot-Bomb 2.0

2006-08-03T09:41:00.000+03:00

Dead2.0 has some relevant suggestions for success in the Web2.0 world. The most important of them, rephrased by me:

Have a revenue model
Be a complete business, not just a feature
Know your target market
Get a memorable name (branding is important!)
Do the research (do people really want your service?)
Ignore the hype and have fun

It really comes down to one thing - read a marketing book before getting started. I recommend Kotler.

At the Zoo

2006-07-21T23:20:00.000+03:00

In front of the hippos
Originally uploaded by dobi.

We had a great time at the zoo on Sunday. Viki liked it a lot, but he is not very interested in animals that big...

HP Unveils RFID's Future Competitor

2006-07-18T09:36:00.000+03:00

Hewlett-Packard unveiled a memory chip the size of a tomato seed on Monday in its Palo Alto laboratories. The tiny chip, called the Memory Spot, can be attached unobtrusively to any object and carry media or data.
The Memory Spot will rival RFID tags in carrying information on movable physical objects, but HP calls it the smarter alternative.

"It has some of the characteristics of RFID but it's very different because it's orders of magnitude different in bandwidth," said Howard Taub, vice president and associate director of HP Laboratories. "It's like comparing a monkey and a human. There are some similarities but the capabilities are very different."

The Memory Spot has a 10 megabits-per-second data-transfer rate and can store up to 4 megabits of data, although the demonstration chips stored only 256 kilobits. The chip has an integrated antenna, which is why it is so much smaller than an RFID chip, which gets most of its size from the separately attached antennae. It receives power through inductive coupling from a special read-write device that extracts data from the memory on the chip.

Novell fires Messman

2006-06-27T13:18:00.000+03:00

The Board of Directors of Novell, Inc. (NOVL) ousted CEO Jack Messman and CFO Joseph Tibbets and consequently the stocks were up 11.0% at the end of last week. Take a look at some of the absurdities in Jack Messman’s employment and severance agreements here.

Mainframe Integration Patterns

2006-06-12T09:22:00.000+03:00

If you want to know exactly how to integrate modern programs with a legacy system, this is a must-read article. All the legacy (COBOL) terms are defined in simple language that higher-level managers can understand. The same clarity applies to the various approaches to integration, which include screen scraping, peer-to-peer communication, messaging (e.g. CICS transactions), adapters, Web services, data integration techniques, database connectivity, database adapters and file adapters.

AJAX Composite Apps

2006-06-12T09:06:00.000+03:00

I came across this intersting and comprehensive article on the trends in the emerging generation of rich Internet applications (RIAs). RIAs feature a "smarter" client capable of statefulness, fat client logic, local data validation, caching and much more. The three most popular approaches to RIAs today include Java, Macromedia Flash, and a combination of native browser functionality referred to as AJAX. Ajax IDEs are still immature, but it's now clear what to look for: a pre-built control library, logic/data binding, code development support, standards support (e.g., for OASIS and W3C) and a development repository.

Mytago - mobile tagging?

2006-05-22T09:27:00.000+03:00

Just found this site on Techcrunch.

Like Mozes, Mytago is trying to find an easy way for people to tag real world stuff for interaction online.
The idea is to create a visual tag (see image) that can be included on a website or, more usefully, somewhere offline like a poster. People who view the Mytago tag can take a picture of it with their camera phone and email or upload it to Mytago. Whatever metadata is associated with the Mytago tag will be bookmarked on the user’s account. In lieu of taking a picture of the image, users can just email in the code that’s included with the tag.

Reading through the site and the comments on Techcrunch, I still don’t get it. How are scannable tags better than just writing down (or taking a picture of) an URL?

Call Center 2.0

2006-05-15T09:08:00.000+03:00

Call centers haven't escaped the Web2.0 buzz. But there are a lot of new features that will be coming to call centers over the next few years. In the area of integration, these include integration into the corporate supply chain and analytical BI tools and the adoption of SOA to facilitate information flow between departments to help with answers to customer questions. Ajax technology and mashups will also play a role in Call Center 2.0. See this article for more details.

Buy Yourself a Search-engine on Ebay

2006-05-06T09:21:00.000+03:00

DigForIt, a small meta search engine, is for sale on eBay. A similar search engine, Jux2, sold for just over $100,000 on ebay late last year. The starting price was $0.01 and current bid is $11,100. There is no reserve, so you may even get it cheaply. The auction ends on May 14.

via Techcrunch

Microsoft patents TV chat

2006-05-02T10:25:00.000+03:00

A patent filed by Microsoft has recently been approved by the United States Patent Office (USPTO). The patent describes a "multimode interactive television chat" system, where the user can view television while simultaneously selecting links available from the show, which may include chat forums revolving around said program.

The TV display and chat interfaces are designed to appear on a single screen at the same time, each in their own frame:

displaying the video signal and the one or more chat communications on the display in a first display mode, such that the video signal is displayed in a first frame that has a corresponding size and position on the display, and such that the one or more chat communications are displayed in a second frame that has a corresponding size and position on the display.

The Downside of IT Certifications

2006-05-02T07:43:00.000+03:00

An interesting study by Foote Partners reviewed by eWeek finds that pay for certified IT skills falls short of the pay for non-certified skills. Among those skills that have lost their value in the last year, the study lists nine, including MCDST (Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician), CISA (Certified Information Systems Auditor), and three Novell certifications (NCDE, MCNE, and CNA).

IBM bakes security into processors

2006-04-10T16:57:00.000+03:00

IBM plans to announce availability of the new technology, dubbed Secure Blue, on Monday. With Secure Blue, data is encrypted and decrypted as it runs through a processor, according to IBM. It is maintained encrypted in the device memory, or RAM. One of the few times data would not be scrambled is when it is actually displayed.

SAP acquires Virsa Systems

2006-04-10T09:19:00.000+03:00

SAP has announced its intention to acquire California-based Virsa Systems, a privately-held supplier of cross-enterprise compliance solutions, for an undisclosed all-cash sum.

AMR Research estimates the market for compliance software to be worth around $8.8bn in 2006. Virsa's products simplify compliance with regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, by enabling customers to embed automated control design, testing and enforcement directly into their business processes.

The beginning of Flickr

2006-04-06T12:07:00.000+03:00

USA Today published an interesting article on the beginnings of Flickr:

Blogs brought Flickr co-founders and husband-and-wife team Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield together six years ago. Butterfield, a Web developer then living in British Columbia, was a fan of Fake's musings about life and technology at her caterina.net blog. In 2000, he happened to meet her at a San Francisco party, where she declined his request for a date, instead leaving with her then-beau Evan Williams, a co-creator of Google's Blogger. Six months later, Butterfield read on a blog that she'd broken up with Williams. He arranged to return to San Francisco and try his luck again. This time, he invited her to British Columbia to go skiing, and she said yes. On the slopes, he proposed they try creating a website together. The rest, as they say, is history.

Google Mars

2006-03-21T18:15:00.000+02:00

Google has launched Google Mars:

This map of Mars, published by Percival Lowell in 1895, was the result of many years spent carefully studying the Red Planet through his telescope. Now you can do the same through your web browser. In collaboration with NASA researchers at Arizona State University, we've created some of the most detailed scientific maps of Mars ever made.

Google acquires SketchUp maker @Last Software

2006-03-21T18:11:00.000+02:00

@Last Software, makers of the 3D sketch software SketchUp, has been acquired by Google Inc. The news comes in an announcement posted to the SketchUp Web site by @Last co-founder Brad Schell. SketchUp, available for Mac OS X and Windows, is a 3D design program created to help designers, architects and others to create, view and modify 3D ideas quickly and easily.

Root Password Readable in Clear Text with Ubuntu

2006-03-13T11:31:00.000+02:00

An extremely critical bug and security threat was discovered in Ubuntu Breezy Badger 5.10 by a visitor on the Ubuntu Forums that allows anyone to read the root password simply by opening an installer log file.

The root password from the first user registred by Breezy can be found by any user by reading the file /var/log/installer/cdebconf/questions.dat

Apparently the installer fails to clean its log files and leaves them readable to all users. The bug has been fixed, and only affects The 5.10 Breezy Badger release.