AMD Readies Puma Laptops for Launch

AMD is preparing to show its Puma Laptop Platform to the world, with the launch penned for June during the Computex trade show. Around 100 laptops based around the Puma platform are being readied in time for the launch

The Puma platform highlights includes:

* AMD Turion X2 Ultra CPU (Griffin)
* Both Intergrated Graphics & HD3400 Discrete GPU (Using Hybrid technology to switch between the two to save power)
* WIFI a/b/g/n

AMD won’t be alone in introducing a new laptop platform though; their main rival Intel is also set to release its Atom low power CPU and its Centrino 2 platform at the same event.

VIA is also set to try to take some market share releasing its Isaiah processor, which is scheduled to be available during the middle of this year.

Messanger group chat on your WL Messenger!

Messenger Group, developed with Windows Live Messenger platform, is a service for a group of Messenger users chatting together in real time. Maybe you think that Windows Live Messenger supports multi-conversation, but this multi-conversation is temporary, will be dismissed with the finish of conversation.

Compared with multi-conversation, Messenger Group is an existing group with each member in, members can talk together at any time without creating a temporary multi-conversation. Messenger Group makes a group of people connecting closer, no matter whether they are on your Messenger contact list. You can create a group for a team, a department or a company to chat online together.

Now if you have a Windows Live ID, then go to Messenger Group website (http://www.messengergroupchat.com) to create your own Messenger Group.

* Free to create Messenger Groups
* Each Messenger Group can have 900 members at most
* Group manager can change group name and display picture
* Group manager can set an administrator to help manage group
* Group member can change their nickname in the group

At present there are more than three million users and 500,000 Messenger groups have been created.

Messenger Group official website

Microsoft Web Servers Hacked

Hundreds of thousands of Web sites - including several at the United Nations and in the U.K. government -- have been hacked recently and seeded with code that tries to exploit security flaws in Microsoft Windows to install malicious software on visitors' machines.

The attackers appear to be breaking into the sites with the help of a security vulnerability in Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS) Web servers. In an alert issued last week, Microsoft said it was investigating reports of an unpatched flaw in IIS servers, but at the time it noted that it wasn't aware of anyone trying to exploit that particular weakness.

On Thursday, Spanish anti-virus vendor Panda Security said that it had alerted Microsoft that a flaw IIS was the cause of all the break-ins. When I asked Microsoft whether they'd heard from Panda or if the hundreds of thousands of sites were hacked from a patched or unpatched flaw in IIS, a spokesman for the company didn't offer much more information.

According to Finnish anti-virus maker F-Secure, the number of hacked Web pages serving up malicious software from this attack may be closer to half a million.

Washington Post

Wordpress 2.5.1

If you download the entire 2.5.1 release, you will be getting over 70 other fixes. 2.5.1 focuses on fixing the most annoying bugs and improving performance.

* Performance improvements for the Dashboard, Write Post, and Edit Comments pages.
* Better performance for those who have many categories
* Media Uploader fixes
* An upgrade to TinyMCE 3.0.7
* Widget Administration fixes
* Various usability improvements
* Layout fixes for IE

Since 2.5 your wp-config.php file allows a new constant called SECRET_KEY which basically is meant to introduce a little permanent randomness into the cryptographic functions used for cookies in WordPress.

via WordPress.org

Review: Executor - Freeware Application Launcher

Most techie people like their PC easy accessible.They want everything handy and in control.They want their desktop and Quick launch bar clean and with no shortcuts at all.

I was used to clean my desktop and quick launch but was accessing every program through 'run' dialog or start menu.

Then i got this application launcher which is very light weight and handy.

Executor is a free ware application launcher.Its having very easy configuration dialog as below which allows you to change
-Hot key
-skins
-history
-drop down box
-transparency

You can add your own commands for anything like a folder,file or any executable.
But the best thing is it supports importing all commands from start menu. yes, its very easy. You just press 'ctrl+I' and it will show you all the programs from start menu.Select your wish list from it and add them.

Now all your favorite programs are handy at just one hot key 'Win+Z'.Type the name of program and executor will fetch and show you its icon also.

It takes some 9 to 10 MB memory of CPU.so no matter what is your PC configuration, you can use this small tool to get your work done fast!

I have used other launchers out of which one is Launchy which is nice tool but it eats around more than 25 MB of CPU memory.

I am using this since more than 1 year and as per me,this is the best launcher.

Servicemix Queue filled - increase Queue size

I have been using servicemix since more then 1 year.As we have seen in urlier articles that servicemix uses ActiveMQ for Message queuing. The messages sent are filled in the Queue of destined component which will be fetched later on.

When we started using Servicemix, we faced a strange problem.After running for sometimes,our application stops processing messages.When we looked in the JMS Queue, we found that after certain period the messages in the queue are not removing.So new messages can't be processed.The Queue is full and we must restart the application to get rid of this.

Then we dig into the source code of servicemix and found how queue is given size.We increased the size as per our need and the problem was solved.

Basically when message processed by the component, it will be removed from its queue.But for some reason, if message not processed or not removed from the queue then further messages will be stored in the queue and processing stops.The application seems to be running but messages are not processed.

The class org.apache.servicemix.jbi.util.BoundedLinkedQueue contains the property capacity_
Constructor of this class contains the magic which initializes the capacity of queue size.

By default it is 1024.you can change it as per your need. I mean how much messages you think will be processed after every restart.

code:

public BoundedLinkedQueue() {
this(1024);
}
public BoundedLinkedQueue(int capacity) {
if (capacity <= 0)
throw new IllegalArgumentException();
capacity_ = capacity;
putSidePutPermits_ = capacity;
head_ = new LinkedNode(null);
last_ = head_;
}

I just simply changes the 1024 to bigger number like 1024*10 etc...

Try this.may be it can solve your problem also.

And others who know about servicemix and want to share their problems and tweaks are welcome.Put your comments here i will post it.

via javaLibs Blog

Java Web application cookie lost?

I got one new change to do in our java web application.I have not been in it since 2 or 4 months and forgot some of its settings.

First of all my jboss refuses to run from eclipse!i was very worried about it, but later i re-configured it as a "dynamic web application" project in eclipse.

So when jboss runs finally, i logged in it and a big blast! it redirected me to error page. I checked the logs but i can't find anything.I was thinking that even i have not chnaged the things in code,configuration etc. then also it stucks here?

But suddenly, a spark happned and i remembered that we set domain for cookies in most web applications.And that thing sucks in local environment.
cookie setting code:

Cookie c1 = new Cookie(name, value);
c1.setDomain(domainName);

So i just commented out c1.setDomain(domainName); and my application is ok.

via javaLibs Blog

Java Mail API with Encoded Attachment FileNames

This is very strange problem i faces as per me. May be because different email clients have different encodings or something else, but we will get encoded filename header from some email clients like lotus, blackberry phone etc.

Message header for attachment:

Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Type: image/jpeg
Content-Disposition:attachment;
filename="=?Windows-1252?B?SU1HMDAwMTYuanBn?="

Then i was stucked with the thing that how to decode the filename.I have the filename only in subject line.But i can not trust that because say if 3 attachments are there, then there will be 3 filenames in subject in order.But we should not depend on the subject of the email.

javax.mail.internet.MimeUtility util class which helps to decode the encoded strings in message header values as below

Method:

javax.mail.internet.MimeUtility.decodeText(strValueToBeDecoded);

But most of the encodings with java 1.3.1 are not supported. At least 1.4.1 must be used.

via javaLibs Blog

Skype's Low-Cost Global Calling Plans

Skype on Monday launched an aggressive $9.95-a-month international calling plan for U.S. customers that includes landlines and some cell phone calls to 34 countries. The action by the eBay unit comes just days after eBay’s chief executive John Donahoe indicated the auction company will seek to find and improve synergies between the VoIP calling unit and eBay’s core auction operation. The Financial Times also reported that Donahoe indicated that eBay would “reassess” Skype if its “synergies” with the auction company aren’t strong. When eBay acquired Skype, the auction company envisioned sellers and buyers on its popular auction site calling each other over Skype. That activity never gained traction and eBay subsequently wrote off $1.4 billion of the $4.3 billion it paid for Skype.

Skype has continued to thrive and grow with more than 309 million global subscribers using the system for VoIP phone calls, instant messages, and now video calls. Skype built its success on undercutting the prices of established telecom providers, and the VoIP business is continuing that policy with the $9.95 plan it announced Monday along with a variety of other calling plans among 34 countries. The plans cover most European countries, North America, and many Asian countries. For U.S. subscribers, a $5.95-a-month plan covers all of North America as well as major Mexican cities. Skype currently offers a $3-a-month plan for North American calls.

Information Week

Hotmail with Outlook will not available!

Microsoft is permanently disabling the ability to receive Hotmail via Outlook Express from June 30th. The software giant recommended via email to its DAV protocol users, the free Windows Live Mail desktop utility as an alternative.

Thank you for using Microsoft® Outlook® Express. Our information indicates that you use Outlook Express to access a Windows Live™ Hotmail® e-mail account via a protocol called DAV (Distributed Authoring and Versioning protocol). DAV, like POP3 or IMAP, is the way that a mail client communicates with a web-based mail server.

As a valued customer, we want to provide advanced notice that as of June 30, 2008, Microsoft is disabling the DAV protocol and you will no longer be able to access your Hotmail Inbox via Outlook Express. As an alternative, we recommend that you download Windows Live Mail, a free desktop e-mail client that has the familiarity of Outlook Express and much more. This next generation of free e-mail software will allow you to easily manage multiple e-mail accounts—including Windows Live Hotmail, plus other e-mail accounts that support POP3/IMAP. Better yet, Windows Live Mail integrates well with other Windows Live services, and downloads in minutes. After you provide your user name and password, you will automatically be linked to your Hotmail account, providing continued access to your email and contacts.

Pencil - open source animation/drawing software

Pencil is an animation/drawing software for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. It lets you create traditional hand-drawn animation (cartoon) using both bitmap and vector graphics. Pencil is free and open source.

Pencil Homepage

Apache CouchDB

Apache CouchDB is a distributed, fault-tolerant and schema-free document-oriented database accessible via a RESTful HTTP/JSON API. Among other features, it provides robust, incremental replication with bi-directional conflict detection and resolution, and is queryable and indexable using a table-oriented view engine with JavaScript acting as the default view definition language.

CouchDB is written in Erlang, but can be easily accessed from any environment that provides means to make HTTP requests. There are a multitude of third-party client libraries that make this even easier for a variety of programming languages and environments.

Apache CouchDB HomePage

Western Digital launches world's fastest SATA disk

The 300GB VelociRaptor from Western Digital. Said to be 35% faster than previous WD Raptors, the 10,000 RPM drive features a 3Gbps SATA interface, 16MB cache, and impressive 1.4 million hour MTBF thanks in part to the IcePack Mounting Frame. The IcePack heat sink not only keeps the drive spinning extra cool, it also bumps the 2.5-inch HDD to a required 3.5-inch drive bay. Available exclusively on Alienware's ALX gaming desktop this month and then up for grabs for everybody with $300 to burn starting mid-May.

Western Digital Product Page

InkScape - Open source scalable vector graphics editor

An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development.

We have used this for our blog banner making and we found it very cool as CorelDraw. As per me, this is very cool and i give it 5 star vote.Very easy to use and exports image in PNG also.

Get, use it and write your comments.

Inkscape.org

500,000 GB MP3 Player!

Can you even imagine an MP3 player with a 500,000 GB capacity? It’s pretty much beyond belief. The most generous player today can only hold around 40,000 songs – they’d hardly make a dent on this.

The thing is, it could easily happen. Scientists at the University of Glasgow have created a nanotechnology breakthrough that could increase storage capacity by 150,000 times. It could mean 500,000 GB on a single chip and inch square.

The Glasgow scientists worked to create the molecule-sized switch that’s at the heart of it all.

More @ digitalTrends

MPAA sues website linking to pirated media

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has sued Pullmylink.com, a website featuring links to free - and allegedly pirated - movies and TV shows, claiming the site promotes and profits from copyright infringement. The lawsuit is the seventh action filed by the MPAA against content aggregators in the US since late last year and is part of a larger anti-piracy campaign that included a criminal raid on the UK headquarters of the website TV Links. The campaign against sites that link to, but do not host, illegal content has raised some eyebrows with critics asking why the association doesn’t go after the host sites or search engines such as Google, which owns video sharing site YouTube.

“...Is the message that it’s less criminal to host illegal content on YouTube than it is to link to it from a site such as TV Links?...”

Guardian technology columnist Jack Schofield wrote in the wake of the MPAA-directed raid on TV Links in October.

rlsLog.net

wxFormBuilder v3.0

wxFormBuilder is an open source WYSIWYG GUI design tool for wxWidgets. See the Features page for a small list of what wxFormBuilder has to offer. This is a large release that has many updates, added features, and bug fixes. The change log is huge so read it at your leisure. Thanks to all who helped test wxFormBuilder, we really appreciate it. This program is available for Windows 2000, XP, and Vista, along with Linux and MacOSX.

ChangeLog:

* FS#349 - “RC8 menu editor still generate incorect menu item code”
* FS#345 - “Crash on Mac OS X when loading plugins”
* Fixed crash on close when showing a propgrid from the wxAdditions plugin
in the Designer window.
* FS#351 - “Can’t edit choices if the ‘\’ is used”

wxformbuilder

MSI and Gigabyte to launch low-cost PCs

Micro-Star International (MSI) and Gigabyte Technology are planning to launch their low-cost PCs by the end of the second quarter this year, according to a Chinese-language Commercial Times report citing sources at the two makers.

MSI showcased its Wind notebook at CeBIT 2008, which will feature either an 8.9- or 10-inch panel and will be priced between 299-699 Euros (US$470-1099).

DigiTimes.com

Paint.Net 3.3

Paint.NET v3.30 Released: April 10th, 2008
This release adds an Italian translation, a new "Fragment Blur" effect, and the ability to save PNG images at 8- and 24-bit color depths. For developers, the IndirectUI system has some new controls, some new constraint rules, and can now be used for file type plugins.

* New: Italian translation.
* New: Ability to save PNG's at 8- and 24-bit color depths.
* New: Ability to save BMP's at 8-bit color depth.
* New: "Auto-detect" bit-depth option for PNG, BMP, and TGA file types. It will analyze the image and determine the lowest bit-depth that can still save the image without quality loss.
* New: "Fragment" blur effect, by Ed Harvey

Download Paint.net

Eclipse Shortcuts

I was free as my code with CR is done. i was thinking wht to write and it just sparked in my mind that this can be a good thing though many of us has explored this.But then also it can help some newbies.

Maximize/minimize the selected window - Ctrl +M
Generate getters/setter - Alt+Shift+s + r
Override/implement methods - Alt+Shift+s + v
Show type implementation - Ctrl+T on selected type in java file
quick class member browser - Ctrl+o
search usage of selected member - Ctrl+Alt+H
comment/uncomment selected lines - ctrl+/
Open declaration - F3

This is what most used ones. You also can submit if i missed important ones in commnets.

via: JavaLibs

Using Apache ServiceMix - ESB with spring

Apache ServiceMix is an open source ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) that combines the functionality of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and an Event Driven Architecture (EDA) to create an agile, enterprise ESB.

Apache ServiceMix is an open source distributed ESB built from the ground up on the Java Business Integration (JBI) specification JSR 208 and released under the Apache license. The goal of JBI is to allow components and services to be integrated in a vendor independent way, allowing users and vendors to plug and play.

Features:

ServiceMix is lightweight and easily embeddable, has integrated Spring support and can be run at the edge of the network (inside a client or server), as a standalone ESB provider or as a service within another ESB. You can use ServiceMix in Java SE or a Java EE application server.

ServiceMix uses ActiveMQ to provide remoting, clustering, reliability and distributed failover.

ServiceMix is completely integrated into Apache Geronimo, which allows you to deploy JBI components and services directly into Geronimo. ServiceMix is being JBI certified as part of the Geronimo project.

Other J2EE application servers ServiceMix has been integrated with include JBoss, JOnAS with more to follow.

ServiceMix includes a complete JBI container supporting all parts of the JBI specification including:

* Normalized Message Service and Router
* JBI Management MBeans
* Ant Tasks for management and installation of components
* full support for the JBI deployment units with hot-deployment of JBI components

ServiceMix also provides a simple to use Client API for working with JBI components and services.

More @ javaLibs

Developement Processes: Some Important some boring

This is no new thing i am writing about.All developers know this and gone through this when ever they got some new thing to develop. It hurts in heart when someone says something which you must do as a process and feels boring.

As per SDLC, some basic steps needed for developers are,

Reading specs and use cases

This is most annoying thing i ever found. Yes because what the analysis team does all knows. Copy-paste some basic paragraphs from the templates,making funny and ugly diagram in word which is never usable to developers,using fast vivid colors which will just make you cry or feels you are reading some horror story and finally the language which is too complex and contains thing which are not of use! What they mention you can't get and what you want them to know they can't deal with it!

Deciding approach & Making design diagrams

This is somewhat very important thing if the team is well. Otherwise all are just suggesting diff. approaches and no decisions at the end!Design diagrams must be prepared before the development but sometimes the project managers or the CEOs are in so hurry that they want get it done fast and deployed even without any Technical documents/design diagrams!
Sometimes the coder submits the diagrams and docs for review but the leaders/seniors are so busy (or may be ignoring it thinking 'its not related to my project') and not reviewed it.And after the code is done, they will find loopholes and design problems in that.Now say whose fault is this?
This is cool when its a small thing and approach is simple, but when you are expecting a whole big feature/module/functionality in short period ,with testing yes keep this in mind "with testing" done,then its a hell for developer. After the coding done, developer asked for diagrams. Now say, isn't its boring? Yes that what i am saying. It sucks!

Coding

Its best part if the thing is designed and design is reviewed properly.As per my experience this is the least time taking step for a good team.

Code Review

CR must be done. But if its done in quite short time after the code done. it means, CR should be fast process of all because developer can complete task fast if its in period while he is inside the thing.Once he had given for CR and you get back to him after some 1 month or so then he even doesn't remember what he had done!
And at some places, quite boring procedures for CR. you submit code filenames for CR, distribute it to some person,write comments on it and etc... This is time wasting and it stinks! It must be a simple process like pressing a button because developers' time is not for this funny things.

Deployment

This may be complex thing but it should not waste coders time. But at some places, system people stuck and call for coders.Some are intelligent to get into but some are even not understanding on total help and documentation provided by a coder.Only the instructions needed to be given by a coder.Its not his job to deploy the whole titanic into the sea!

Testing

Now is the worst thing that a developer may be need to do sometimes.Yes i have done this even more than hundreds times because of some funny and frustrating test cycles! Sometimes they even don't know how to test & What should they do!You can say its better you do it all instead giving them the idea.This is mostly happens because nowadays testing people are nontechnical! They just know clicking the button and etc.They don't know how to deal with application internals and view log and all.May be companies wants some nontechnical arts graduate as a tester in less money instead of a good testing software engineer!
And sometimes they raise wrong bugs which have been tested with wrong scenarios,even on your instructions that this is not right one to test!And when you draft a mail which makes them shy or some senior person bang on them, they feels you like an enemy!

Bug fixing

This is most 'long long long' process for coders.The diff. natured(technical/nontechnical,thinking themselves as coders) testers rais long list of bugs out which rare cases are function issues.Most are like for UI things.And when a coder is given a bug which not of his area then definitely it will consume more time and if we calculate total time for such non-related-area bugs of all coders then it will make a big difference in the process completion date.May be it can delay release if the testing cycles are more in numbers but less detailed and proper.

This is not like i am bored of coding. I love coding but everything which is having its charms,have some bad things also associated with it.Say if testers are also coders then? may be you can get more bugs? yes but you can test fats and at the end your final release would be a great thing.Same thing applies for all team in SDLC ;). i mean analysis,project management,testing all.

I am telling what i think. It depends on particular's likings ;)

Just do Code.

Rockbox - open source firmware for mp3 players

Rockbox is an open source firmware for mp3 players, written from scratch. It runs on a wide range of players:

* Apple: 1st through 5.5th generation iPod, iPod Mini and 1st generation iPod Nano
(not the Shuffle, 2nd/3rd gen Nano, Classic or Touch)
* Archos: Jukebox 5000, 6000, Studio, Recorder, FM Recorder, Recorder V2 and Ondio
* Cowon: iAudio X5, X5V, X5L, M5, M5L, M3 and M3L
* iriver: H100, H300 and H10 series
* Olympus: M:Robe 100
* SanDisk: Sansa c200, e200 and e200R series (not the v2 models)
* Toshiba: Gigabeat X and F series (not the S series)

It has been in development since 2001 and receives new features, tweaks and fixes every day to provide you with the best possible music listening experience. Rockbox aims to be considerably more functional and efficient than your device's stock firmware while remaining easy to use and customizable. We believe that you should never need to go through a series of menus for an action you perform frequently. We also believe that you should be able to configure almost anything about Rockbox you could want, pertaining to functionality. It is written by users, for users.

Another top priority of Rockbox is audio playback quality. Rockbox, for most models, includes a wider range of sound settings than that device's original firmware. A lot of work has been put into making Rockbox sound the best it can, and improvements are constantly being made. All models have access to a large number of plugins, including many games, applications, and graphical demos.

You can load different configurations quickly for different purposes (e.g. a large font for in your car, different sound settings for at home). You can even customize your While Playing screen to display only and exactly what you want to see when your music is playing. In addition, Rockbox features a wide range of languages, and all supported models also have the ability to talk to you - menus can be voiced and filenames spelled out or spoken.

RockBox.org

Ubuntu studio - multimedia flavor of Ubuntu

Ubuntu Studio is aimed at the GNU/Linux audio, video and graphic enthusiast as well as professional.

A suite of the best open-source applications available for multimedia creation. Completely free to use, modify and redistribute. Your only limitation is your imagination.

UbuntuStudio.org

MetatOGGer 3.0 - audio tagging and renaming tool

MetatOGGer enables you to tag, rename and organize your Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, Speex and MP3 files. It allows you to rename files based on their existing tags and also by their folder path (useful if your folder path contains the relevant artist and album names). If you have music files with generic names (e.g track1.mp3) and no tags, the built-in acoustic fingerprint look-up (powered by MuzicBrainz) may be able to identify and tag the files for you. MetatOGGer can also gather artist information from a local database which is faster than online look-up but requires you to download the database file first. Other features include file organizing based on tag info (copy, move etc.), manual tagging and cleaning of unwanted tags.

MetatOGGer 3.0 is the first tagging tool which boasts a dynamic and vector user interface, based on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). This software offers an excellent simplcity-power report compared to the competition.

It allows:

* Editing tags, manually or using C # scripts;
* To get tags from filename or path;
* To rename files based on tags;
* To organize files based on tags (copying, moving, symbolic linking with Vista);
* To retrieve tags from a local database containing more than 300000 discs;
* Identify files from their acoustic fingerprint;
* To quickly clean unwanted tags.

Homepage

HP Releases its First Linux-powered Laptop

At the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit at the University of Texas Supercomputing Center April 8, Hewlett-Packard announced the release of its first Linux-powered computer to be sold in the United States, the HP 2133 Mini-Note PC running Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 Service Pack 1.

HP was expected to offer a Linux desktop, and now it has finally done so. It’s not, however, the Linux desktop that many users expected. Instead of being a general-purpose consumer system or business PC, the Mini-Note is meant for the education market.

TechaChino

MenuetOS

MenuetOS is an Operating System in development for the PC written entirely in 32/64 bit assembly language, and released under the License. It supports 32/64 bit x86 assembly programming for smaller, faster and less resource hungry applications.

Menuet has no roots within UNIX or the POSIX standards, nor is it based on any particular operating system. The design goal has been to remove the extra layers between different parts of an OS, which normally complicate programming and create bugs.

Menuet's application structure is not specifically reserved for asm programming since the header can be produced with practically any other language. However, the overall application programming design is intended for easy 32/64 bit asm programming. Menuet's responsive GUI is easy to handle with assembly language.

Features:

- Pre-emptive multitasking with 1000hz scheduler, multithreading, ring-3 protection
- Responsive GUI with resolutions up to 1280x1024, 16 million colours
- Free-form, transparent and skinnable application windows, drag'n drop
- IDE: Editor/Macro Assembler for applications
- TCP/IP stack with Loopback & Ethernet drivers
- Email/ftp/http/chess clients and ftp/mp3/http servers
- Hard real-time data fetch
- Fits on a single floppy

menuetos.net

Customized Linux PC for MySpacers

PC vendor Everex and gOS (Good OS), the Linux distribution based around Google applications, is taking the next step in online-based computing by introducing a limited edition MySpace PC.

The companies hope that the white-cased, two-pound MyMiniPC will attract what Everex officials claim is some of the more than 100 million MySpace users. As such, it’s the first PC, using any operating system, designed expressly to use with a social network.

More @ TechaChino

Indonesia Blocks YouTube!

Indonesia has become the latest in a series of countries to block popular video sharing site YouTube over content concerns. According to Sukemi, an information ministry official, at least four Indonesian ISPs have blocked access to the site for carrying a Dutch lawmaker's film, titled "Fitna", that accuses the Koran of inciting violence. The move follows a government ban on broadcasts of the film by Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch anti-immigration Freedom Party, which alternates images of the September 11, 2001 attacks and other Islamist bombings with quotations from the Koran.

The four companies which have blocked access are: PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia (Telkom), PT Telekomunikasi Selular (Telkomsel), PT Exelcomindo Pratama Tbk, and Indonet. Telekom had also previously blocked social networking site MySpace and is still looking for other sites and blogs that have posted the film to block them, Eddy Kurnia, vice-president for public and marketing communication, said in a statement.

More @ ReUters

DJango - Python Web framework

Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.

Django focuses on automating as much as possible and adhering to the DRY principle.

Object-relational mapper

Define your data models entirely in Python. You get a rich, dynamic database-access API for free — but you can still write SQL if needed.

Automatic admin interface

Save yourself the tedious work of creating interfaces for people to add and update content. Django does that automatically, and it's production-ready.

Elegant URL design

Design pretty, cruft-free URLs with no framework-specific limitations. Be as flexible as you like.

Template system

Use Django's powerful, extensible and designer-friendly template language to separate design, content and Python code.

Cache system

Hook into memcached or other cache frameworks for super performance — caching is as granular as you need.

Internationalization

Django has full support for multi-language applications, letting you specify translation strings and providing hooks for language-specific functionality.

DJangoProject

JScreenFix - fix stuck pixels!

JScreenFix is a software solution that can fix stuck pixels, reduce screen burn-in and improve the quality of images displayed on a screen.

A stuck pixel is a bright dot of colour most noticeable when the rest of the screen is black. Stuck pixels are fairly common on high resolution LCD screens. Stuck pixels sometimes start working again with time unless they appear black on a white background, these are known as dead pixels.

JScreenFix repairs stuck pixels through rapid, repetitive operation and resonance. Most stuck pixels are repaired within 20 minutes.

Dark patches on a plasma screen are the result of screen burn-in. Burn-in occurs on plasma screens if an area of the screen does not change for a long period of time. For TV input, channel logos often burn into the screen. This can also occur on LCD screens and is more correctly referred to as image persistence.

More @ JScreenFix

360 Desktop

360desktop extends your Windows® desktop as a user generated, photo-panoramic space and delivers a personalized web, free of the browser, into a virtually unlimited desktop.

Grab all of your favourite web applications and content — web widgets, RSS feeds or any part of any web pages — and make them available any time in an expanded photo-panoramic desktop.

More @ 360Desktop

Pidgin 2.4.1 released...

New version of pidgin released on 31st March,2008.Below is the changelog.

Changelog:

* libpurple

o Treat AIM Unicode messages as UTF-16 rather than UCS-2; this should have no functional effect, other than continued support on systems which have dropped UCS-2 conversions.
o Add support for setting buddy icons on Gadu-Gadu (Tomasz Salacinski)
o Fix a crash when clearing the buddy icon for an account on XMPP
o Fix a crash during login for some ICQ accounts
o Prefer more available resources on XMPP when priorities are equal
o Fix incorrectly marking some Yahoo! contacts as blocked
o Improved handling of UTF-8 group names on ICQ (beret)
o Fix a crash when starting if you have a Zephyr account
o Increase XMPP ping timeout to 120 seconds, to prevent poor network connections from timing out unnecessarily.
o Don't crash on XMPP forms with empty default values.
o Fix issues with CHAP authentication for SOCKS5 proxies.

* Pidgin

o Remove a workaround for older versions gstreamer that was causing crashes on some non-Linux systems such as HPUX
o Fix some cases of the conversation input entry area being 1 pixel high
o Fix for displaying channel & buddy names in conversation window when they have '&' in them
o Some memory leak fixes, especially in the Text Replacement plugin
o Rectangular but non-square buddy icons have rounded corners in the buddy list

* Finch

o Fix compiling with Glib older than 2.6
o Ensure existing conversations selected from the 'Send IM' dialog are given focus
o Move the tooltip on the left of the buddylist if there's not enough room on the right to show it.

Pidgin Home

Castor project - XML mapping to java class

Castor XML mapping is a way to simplify the binding of java classes to XML document. It allows to transform the data contained in a java object model into/from an XML document.The mapping information is specified by an XML document. This document is written from the point of view of the Java object and describes how the properties of the object have to be translated into XML.

The mapping file describes for each object how each of its fields have to be mapped into XML. A field is an abstraction for a property of an object. It can correspond directly to a public class variable or indirectly to a property via some accessor methods (setters and getters).

castor.org

Java Spring Framework : Multiple PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer configurtion

This is very small thing which can be very annoying while coding in spring framework. Of cource no one can directly understand the problem until he faced that.

At first, I had only one property file from which i am reading some values into spring applicationContext Xml configuration file.So when i needed to add second one for my new feature, i think it is just to add new propertyPlaceholderConfigurer bean with second prop file.

my first prop file 'default-prop.properties' is :

default-prop.custName=testing customer
default-prop.address=building1

and the bean definition in the applicationContext xml file for this is:

<bean id="propertyConfigurer"
class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
<property name="location">
<value>classpath:default-prop.properties</value>
</property>
</bean>

so while adding second one, i have just added second bean for it like:

<bean id="propertyConfigurerNew"
class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
<property name="location">
<value>classpath:second-prop.properties</value>
</property>
</bean>

and in xml, prop has been read as,

<property name="customerName" value="${default-prop.custName}" />

But when i done this, i got error

"Could not resolve placeholder 'default-prop.custName' "

So i have to do some workaround and digg into spring references. And i found that we can define seperate placeHolderPrefix and suffix for each property configurer bean.

I have changed the bean definition as,

<bean id="propertyConfigurer"
class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
<property name="location">
<value>classpath:default-prop.properties</value>
</property>
<property name="placeholderPrefix" value="${" />
<property name="placeholderSuffix" value="}" />
</bean>

<bean id="propertyConfigurerNew"
class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
<property name="location">
<value>classpath:second-prop.properties</value>
</property>
<property name="placeholderPrefix" value="#[" />
<property name="placeholderSuffix" value="]" />
</bean>

it means, for first prop bean, we will use ${default-prop.custName} and for second bean we will use #[second-prop.secondName]

And voila! it solved my problem...

You can also use

<property name="ignoreUnresolvablePlaceholders" value="true" />

for each PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer bean defined. But, i have used the prefix-suffix one solution.
And my problem is resolved.

Give your comments on this problem and solution.

Opera v9.27

Opera is a super fast and free Web browser,designed to make your life easier! Why Opera? Safe, secure, powerful and fully customizable, the Opera Web browser is faster and more secure than other browsers available on the market. Opera delivers robust security and a far-richer feature set than any other Web browser and it's free.

Whether you're going to work, working from home, developing Web sites, or just looking for a quick, solid browser that can help you quickly access the Internet, the free Opera Web browser delivers a superior Internet experience for every aspect of your online life, with lots of extra tech tools for power users! Opera 9.2 is free to download.

Opera

curvyCorners - javascript for rounded corners

curvyCorners is a free JavaScript program that will create on-the-fly rounded corners for any HTML DIV element, that look as good as any graphically created corners.
Features:

* Free
* Easy to use JavaScript object
* Requires no images or image editing
* Full Anti-Aliasing support
* Anti-Aliasing over graphical backgrounds
* Background-image support (round corners of images)
* Fluid height/width support
* Solid border support, any colour/width with Anti-Aliasing
* User defined per corner radiuses

curvycorners.net

vLite:Free utility slipstreams SP1 with Vista

The Croatian college student who created software to shrink Windows Vista's footprint has updated the program so users can build installation media that integrates Service Pack 1. Dino Nuhagic updated his free vLite utility last week and then again yesterday to support "slipstreaming" of SP1, Microsoft's recent update to Vista. Dubbed vLite 1.1.6 Beta 2, the newest version now includes a "Service Pack Slipstream" action item that lets users merge SP1's changes with the files on an original, or RTM (release to manufacturing) install disc, and then produce an .iso file of the blend that can be burned to DVD and used to install Vista with the service pack included.

To slipstream SP1 with Vista, users need a copy of vLite, the 32-bit- or 64-bit SP1 stand-alone installer that Microsoft posted last month to its download site, and a blank DVD disc.

Nuhagic has labeled 1.1.6 as a beta. "Consider this [slipstreaming] feature a true beta test," he said in a post to his blog last Friday. "Let's give it more time," he said today in an interview via instant messaging when asked to describe the stability of the slipstreaming function. "I will name it 'final' after some more feedback. I mean, I did try it and it works, but you never know."

ChangeLog

FireFox 3 beta 5 released!

Firefox 3 is based on the Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 32 months. Building on the previous release, Gecko 1.9 has more than 12,000 updates including some major re-architecting to provide improved performance, stability, rendering correctness, and code simplification and sustainability. Firefox 3 has been built on top of this new platform resulting in a more secure, easier to use, more personal product with a lot more under the hood to offer website and Firefox add-on developers.

Firefox 3 Beta 5 includes more than 750 changes from the previous beta, improving stability and web compatibility, providing platform and user interface enhancements, and resulting in the fastest Firefox ever. Many of these improvements were based on community feedback from the previous beta.

Download | Release Notes

IcoFX 1.6

IcoFX is an award winning freeware icon editor. It is an all-in-one solution for icon creation, extraction and editing. It is designed to work with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Macintosh icons supporting transparency. With a wealth of tools and more than 40 effects at your fingertips, there's virtually no limit to the icons you can create. You can easily convert your favorite images into icons, or icons into images. IcoFX gives you the possibility to create icon libraries or change icons inside exe files. Create a favicon for your website or blog.

icofx.ro

Google Docs & Microsoft Office Live With 'Gears'

Google took an important step forward Monday in its rivalry with Microsoft Office Live, reporting that Google Docs will allow users to edit word processing documents offline.
Google said users of its Google Docs word processing application can use Google Gears to save and then edit documents without being connected to the Internet.

"Cloud computing is great, but you need the cloud to make it work,"

Philip Tucker, software engineer, Google Docs, wrote in a Google blog.

"On an airplane, on the shuttle commuting to work, or at home when my cable modem goes down, I want to work on my documents. And, until now, that usually meant saving a copy and editing on the desktop.Now there's a better solution. With Google Docs offline, I can take my little piece of the cloud with me wherever I go,"

Tucker added.

"Once enabled, I have a local version of my document list and editors, along with my documents."

The editing feature, Google Gears, is an application programming interface introduced by Google more than a year ago to application developers to create Web applications that can run offline.

Microsoft Launches Windows Mobile 6.1

At CTIA Wireless 2008, Robbie Bach unveiled new features for an update to Windows Mobile, which includes enhanced features for socializing like threaded text messaging and features for simpler navigation. He also announced Microsoft’s plans to bring desktop-grade Web browsing experience to the Windows Mobile phone with an upcoming version of Internet Explorer Mobile.

Updates and new phones are expected to be available beginning in the second quarter of 2008. IE Mobile will be available to mobile phone partners in the third quarter of 2008 with the first Windows Mobile phones using the new version to be available by the end of 2008.

For Windows Mobile phones used in businesses, System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 is now available.

The Microsoft Mobile Services Plan (MMSP) was also announced today in partnership with AT&T, O2, Orange, TaTa Teleservices Ltd. and Verizon Wireless. The plan will help businesses with:

• Securing Windows Mobile phones with the same ease and flexibility as Windows-based PCs and providing access to information behind a company’s firewall.
• Helping businesses meet their mobile device management needs through mobile operators with the MMSP.
• Managing and securing phones with Exchange Server 2007 SP1 advanced mobile policies while enabling people to find, share, and use information no matter where they are

Press Release

Inkscape 0.46 - open source vector graphics editor

Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more.

Note: Officially Inkscape 0.46 has been released on March 24, 2008. Package for the Windows platform, has become available just now.

Release Notes

Firefox 3, alpha 8 released

Gran Paradiso Alpha 8 is an early developer milestone for Firefox 3 and the next generation of Mozilla’s layout engine, Gecko 1.9. Gran Paradiso Alpha 8 is being made available for testing purposes only, and is intended for web application developers and our testing community.

Some of the changes included with Gran Paradiso Alpha 8 are:

* Basic and unpolished UI for starring and tagging pages has been added, as well as a richer Location Bar autocomplete algorithm that matches against page title (see Places UI Plan for more details)
* Prompt for remembering passwords is no longer a modal dialog
* Built in malware protection (which you can test here)
* Basic and unpolished UI for indicating richer website identity information has been added
* Support for web-based protocol handlers, though it doesn’t work in all situations (see bug 394483).
* A new Applications preference panel for configuring handlers for various content types (see bug 377784) has replaced the Download Actions dialog and the Feeds preference panel
* All Firefox add-ons must now use a secure method for auto-updating (see bug 378216 and this guide for more details)
* Firefox now quits properly (instead of just being killed) when Windows is shut down or restarted (see bug 333907)
* Added support for document.elementFromPoint method (see bug 199692)
* DOMWillOpenModalDialog events are no longer fired by the nsIPrompt implementation (see bug 391100)
* TYPE_PLUGIN has been removed from the Extension Manager code (see bug 392140)
* You can also see the full list of all bugs fixed since Gran Paradiso Alpha 7

Gran Paradiso 1.9 Alpha 8 contains the following notable changes:

* Basic and unpolished UI for starring and tagging pages has been added, as well as a richer Location Bar autocomplete algorithm that matches against page title (see Places UI Plan for more details)
* Prompt for remembering passwords is no longer a modal dialog
* Built in malware protection (which you can test here)
* Basic and unpolished UI for indicating richer website identity information has been added
* Support for web-based protocol handlers, though it doesn't work in all situations (see bug 394483).
* A new Applications preference panel for configuring handlers for various content types (see bug 377784) has replaced the Download Actions dialog and the Feeds preference panel
* All Firefox add-ons must now use a secure method for auto-updating (see bug 378216 and this guide for more details)
* Firefox now quits properly (instead of just being killed) when Windows is shut down or restarted (see bug 333907)
* Added support for document.elementFromPoint method (see bug 199692)
* DOMWillOpenModalDialog events are no longer fired by the nsIPrompt implementation (see bug 391100)
* TYPE_PLUGIN has been removed from the Extension Manager code (see bug 392140)
* You can also see the full list of all bugs fixed since Gran Paradiso Alpha 7

Some of the changes in Alpha versions of Gecko 1.9 affect the web and platform compatibility of Gran Paradiso Alpha 8. For detailed information about changes in Gecko 1.9 and Gran Paradiso, please read these pages:

Gecko 1.9 Changes affecting websites
Firefox 3 for developers

Gran Paradiso Alpha 8 is available for the following platforms:

Microsoft Windows 2000 or later
Mac OS X 10.4 or later
Linux

Sony BMG Sued for Software Piracy!

Sony BMG, a company known for enforcing its intellectual property rights, is now facing the other end of an Intellectual Property related lawsuit. A report (French) says the complaining company, PointDev, seized some of Sonys assets which revealed that the pirated software appeared on four of their servers.

PointDev, a small software company, mandated a bailiff to raid one of Sony BMGs owned building in January this year. The raid revealed that four of the Sony BMGs owned servers contained the pirated software.

It appears as though the company discovered this when an IT department employee requested assistance for the use of a product called Ideal Migration. When technical support looked into the case, they discovered that the key used to activate the software was a pirated version.

Essentially, the PointDev CEO says that the BSA has said that French Corporations have a software piracy rate of 47%. The CEO also says that piracy may even be a part of Sony's business policy - if you can't afford it, pirate it. It is said that Sony was in the process of merging with BMG when the pirating incident occurred.

An additional report (French) (Google Translation) says that the CEO of PointDev wants to make this piracy case an example.

Sony told La Province to not report on the ongoing investigation. Clearly, Sony is not happy that this case was made public at all.

via zeropaid.com

Dell's Blu-ray Laptop For Under $900 !

Dell is jumping on Sony's Blu-ray bandwagon by offering an optional Blu-ray disc drive on its Inspiron 1525 notebook, with a sale price starting at $879.

Dell has been a backer of Blu-ray from the beginning, and we've actually been offering Blu-ray notebooks for close to 18 months now.

said Dell spokeswoman Anne Camden.

The big news now is we are actually able to offer it at a price that puts it at a mainstream user's reach.

A company release said the disc drive is fully backwards compatible, and will play as well as burn traditional DVDs and CDs. The company is also offering consumers a Blu-ray burner drive, which Dell recommends for backing up and storing files like digital photos, videos, financial records. Blu-ray discs have a significant advantage over standard DVDs, with 50 GB of data available versus 8.5 GB available on a typical DVD disc.

CRN.com