Archive for the ‘Microsoft’ category

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Great DotNetNuke conversation

January 5th, 2008

I had the pleasure of speaking with Joe Brinkman last year @ codemash, and perhaps will get a chance to speak with him again next week (again, @ codemash).  Anyway, while not directly in the dot net community myself, I try to keep up with what’s going on all over the place.  I stumbled on this really interesting dicussion of module pricing in the DotNetNuke community.  What was interesting to me was that there were comparisons to PHP open source (Joomla) and commercial .NET stuff (Community Server), and a host of good insights from a number of pretty sharp people.

At the end of the day, it’s probably just par for the course in that community, but it was certainly educational to learn about some of the challenges still faced by one of the larger, more well-known .NET open souce projects.

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Posted in Microsoft, Software, Web, opensource

PHP on mobile devices

December 20th, 2007

I heard about this last week, which is an article about running PHP on Symbian mobile devices.  Haven’t seen much in the press about this, possibly because it’s not a full release, but just an announcement.  The crux of the article is that someone has ported Apache, MySQL and PHP to the Symbian E90.  They’re calling this “PAMP” – Personal Apache MySQL PHP.  Being able to run a browser on the phone and connect to local AMP apps might herald a new age in mobile app development, or perhaps not.  Palm was the primary game in town for awhile, but I found that to be too difficult (I’m not a C developer).  Windows Mobile seems to be the primary mobile platform right now, for quick app development and widespread deployment.  Apple’s iPhone and this new PAMP might be a next wave in mobile development.  What do you think?

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Posted in Development, Microsoft, MySQL, PHP, Software, Web, opensource

Codemash free admission drawing giveaway

December 6th, 2007

The codemash organizers have graciously donated a free pass to the upcoming Codemash conference to be given away to one lucky webdevradio.com listener.  To enter in to the drawing, listen to the codemash episode interview podcast on webdevradio with Jim Holmes, follow the instructions, and hope your name is drawn.

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Posted in Codemash, Conferences, Database, Development, Microsoft, MySQL, PHP, Perl, Podcasts, Software, Testing, Web, linux, opensource

Collanos broken with default Ubuntu Java

November 30th, 2007

‘broken’ is a bit of a stretch, but not working 100%.  I posted this to the collanos forum with my workaround.

Searched for this topic but couldn’t find anything on it.

We’re trying to get collanos running in a mixed environment.  2 XP, 1 mac, 1 Mandriva and 2 Ubuntu (7.10).

The XP and Mandriva work fine.  Mac owner is out of town, but will try next week.

The ubuntu boxes both do not show any ‘object’ info beyond the word ‘file’.

Whereas in other platforms we see things like ‘file/application/msword’, the ubuntu versions only show the word ‘file’.  No MIME information is getting displayed (possibly stored, I don’t know) beyond “File”.  Adding a ‘.doc’ file from the ubuntu machine shows it as ‘file’ on that machine but it is shown as ‘file/application/msword’ on other machines.

This bug is preventing the ubuntu users from being able to launch anything from the workspace, which is a real drag.  It might be preventing other behaviour too – this is just the first thing I’ve been able to track down.

It looks like collanos is using its own distributed JRE.

If I change the Workplace.ini file’s VM paramter and point to the sun 1.6.0 JRE installed on the system, the bug seems to go away.  What’s odd is that this isn’t a problem with the collanos-supplied JRE on Mandriva, but only on ubuntu (well, those are the only two I tested).

So my /opt/CollanosWorkplace/Workplace.ini looks like

-nosplash
-clean
-vm
/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.03/jre/bin/java
-vmargs
-client
-Xms96m
-Xmx256m
…
more data here
…

instead of

-nosplash
-clean
-vm
/opt/CollanosWorkplace/jre/bin/java
-vmargs
-client
-Xms96m
-Xmx256m
…
more data here
…

I hope this helps someone else with the same problem and helps Collanos fix the bug or workaround it somehow. 

java still seems to be  ‘write once, debug on every possible vm’  Smiley

Java is still going, but has seemingly fractured so much, it’s a brand now, not a technology.  Those fractures cause a lot of problems for developers and users alike.  We’ve seen it with the Mac – Apple not shipping a Java 6, and frustrating a lot of developers.  Why did Apple ever get in a position where they could decide Java’s fate on the Mac, instead of Sun?  Apparently Sun agreed to let Apple maintain the Mac version of Java, and Apple went about creating Apple-specific hooks for Java (I’m presuming these were primarily desktop and ui integration points, but I’ve never seen a comprehensive list of Apple’s Java changes). Why did Apple get a free pass to do this when MS got their head taken off for *basically* the same behaviour?  End result would be that I could right Java on Mac which would not behave the same on other platforms (or, likely, at all).

Many Linux distros ship the gcj/gij stuff from GNU as an ‘open’ replacement for a ‘commercial’ Java.  Whether the GNU project compiles to the name ‘java’ or whether the distro makers do it, this is certainly a misrepresentation and/or damaging to Sun’s Java efforts.  If on a Linux distro I see this:

$ java --version
java version "1.5.0"
gij (GNU libgcj) version 4.2.1 (Ubuntu 4.2.1-5ubuntu5)

Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

I know that people will get a worse experience with ‘java’ than if they had the Sun java system (or any other java system that has had to pass all the compatibility tests).  Why does Sun let all these Linux distros (and perhaps GNU itself) dilute the Java brand so much?

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Posted in Java, Microsoft, Software, linux, opensource

Latest podcast up

November 26th, 2007

I put up a new webdevradio podcast last week, day after Thanksgiving (or was it the day before?  I forget now).  Anyway, I’ve turned on the comments – apparently there was a bug that was stopping it from working – and am inviting more feedback and audio comments from listeners.  The podcast is short this time (15 minutes) but I specifically invite comments on two topics.  I get a lot of questions on these two, so I opened up the floor instead of just spouting off.

1.  For someone just getting in to web development, what should they study/focus on?  LAMP?  Java?  .NET?  Rails?  Flash?  What would you recommend and why?

2.  What are some good resources for learning advanced PHP, and more specifically good PHP OO practices?

There’ve been a few good responses already at http://www.webdevradio.com, but more are always appreciated, either text or audio (just upload an mp3 file!)

Thanks!

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Posted in Blogging, Design, Development, Microsoft, MySQL, PHP, Perl, Podcasts, Software, Web, linux

License clickthrough recording

November 23rd, 2007

Recording is really the word I was looking for, but I can’t think of a better one yet.  What I’m wondering here is why recording/storing the act of a clickthrough license acceptance isn’t something built in to Windows or OSX (on Linux I guess I can understand why, as the culture likely wouldn’t accept it).

Most software gets installed in Windows or OSX via some standard installation mechanisms.  “Installing” in OSX might be somewhat a misnomer, as I believe it’s often just copied, without any ‘registration’ of the process with a central registry ala Windows.  So perhaps this idea would only work in the Windows ecosystem.

The main idea is to log the text of whatever ‘click through’ license was accepted during the installation of each program.  That would need to be some sort of OS-level call that installers could call, and I guess there would need to be a certain level of trust that the license shown the user is also the same one stored in the registry.

My thinking here is that it would address the issue of people in companies installing random applications.  This would give the part-time sysadmin the ability to audit not just the apps installed, but also the terms the user agreed to and theoretically bound the company to.  Completely locking people’s machines down is an option as well, but depending on the situation and resources, isn’t really a good option.  For larger companies, the Software Update Server is used to push out new software to people’s desktops, so presumably the syadmins in those cases have reviewed the licenses and understand them and keep a record of them.

Is this a crazy or pointless idea?  Has it been done and I’m not aware of it?

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Posted in Microsoft, Software

Microsoft Web Development Summit 2007

October 30th, 2007

Ben Ramsey » Blog Archive » Microsoft Web Development Summit 2007

Ben’s part of a group of PHPers that have been invited to Microsoft to discuss PHP, MS, interoperability and other cool topics.  He’s meeting with some bigwigs like Scott Guthrie, which means MS is serious about this topic.  MS had a group of PHP people up back in 02 or 03, but I’m not sure it’s happened since.  Good to see it happening, and that MS is being responsive to the needs of the PHP community.  I guess they’d like more people moving from LAMP to WISP (Windows, IIS, SQLServer, PHP).  Or would SPIW be a better acronym?  ;)

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Posted in Friends, Microsoft, PHP, Software, Web, linux, opensource

Raleigh web job market

October 25th, 2007

If you’re in the Raleigh area and are looking for a job in the web development market, give me a holler – I’ve had recruiters calling night and day.  AND they’re not all calling with the same position.  That used to happen once in a while – I’d have calls from three recruiters that were all trying to fill the same position.  You could tell – easily – by the wording of the position description.

“Night and day” is a slight exaggeration, but I’ve had more contacts in the past 3 months than the previous 6 before that.  Talking with both recruiters and employers directly, there seems to be at least an overall *slight* shortage of good qualified workers in the area.  There may be a bigger shortage of people in certain areas, and less in others, but on the whole it seems there’s more work than workers right now.  I have info on people who need LAMP/PHP, Java and .Net people for either full time, contract or part time work.

I don’t know if there’s just an issue with fiscal years rolling over and new budgets happening, or if there’s some other explanation, but I’ve noticed a very large amount of activity going on here.  I just hope the positions get filled, because long term, if not, that would mean employers would look elsewhere to set up shop, expand and hire.

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Posted in Business, Job, Microsoft, MySQL, PHP, Ruby, Web

Looking for book reviewers

October 10th, 2007

Specifically of technical books.  I’ve got a small backlog of books I wanted reviewed for techbookreviews.com.  I thought I had more time than I did, but I don’t (isn’t that always how it goes?).  So, in the interests of time and getting other people besides myself involved, I’d like to invite some of you to help.  I’ve done the first experiment, and it’s turned out pretty good so far.  In return for reading through a technical book (such as a PHP, Javascript, Ruby, .NET or other book) and providing a review of anywhere from 500-1000 words, you get a free book, your review posted at techbookreviews.com, and some pay.  I’ve not firmed this up yet – it’ll probably decide on the size of the book to some extent, but either a paypal xfer or amazon certificate for $5 or $10.

If you’re interested in participating, send me an email to mgkimsal@gmail.com with your name, mailing address, a list of technologies you’re interested in reviewing, and ideally links to some writing samples.  I currently have books on C# and Javascript and DotNetNuke and possibly Ruby in my backlog, and more are in the pipeline.

Looking forward to hearing from you all!

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Posted in Blogging, Development, Ideas, Java, Microsoft, MySQL, PHP, Perl, Software, Web, Writing, opensource

Pro Drupal Development review

August 16th, 2007

I’ve got this crazy idea to start posting book reviews. I’ve worked with Apress to interview some of their authors for my web development podcast series (webdevradio.com). However, our schedules don’t always mesh up, so in cases where I can’t interview someone (or haven’t yet) I will be putting up book reviews. This will likely be limited to web-oriented tech books, at least to start, but I’m looking forward to being able to tell you the good and bad about books as I come across them.

My first post is over on a new URL – http://www.techbookreviews.com. Let me know what you think, over there or right here. Thanks!

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Posted in Development, Microsoft, PHP, Software, Web, opensource