Technology and geeky stuff Archives - Page 26 of 45

Did PHP kill the Java radio star?

10 April, 2009 by sky Leave a Comment

Responding to Infoworld Did PHP kill the Java radio star?

Zend’s CEO, Andi Gutmans, claims that PHP is disrupting Java. Meaning that PHP has gotten a significant toehold and is dislodging Java from its position as the granddaddy of server-side web applications frameworks[1]. I take the word disrupting in its modern sense of disruptive technology – a technology that significantly differs from the standard paradigm and whose effect would have been hard to predict, based on the “rules” of the standard paradigm.

I am a long-time Java-user (9 years) and I agree that PHP is a real contender in the web applications sphere… and would like to make some additional observations. [Read more…]

Null pointer at Starbucks

6 April, 2009 by sky Leave a Comment

Approaching the cash register at Starbucks I noticed this perhaps puzzling message on the little LCD display. It has nothing to do with the economic meltdown, or the amount of cash in the cash drawer, but instead reflects a programming error!

Generally a register displays a short greeting on its display when it is “off” like Come back soon (or at Squaw Valley Winter’s here). In this case the string of characters that usually contains the greeting was probably missing, and the software, encountering the situation, displays the message “null” meaning null pointer error. Made me laugh out loud, and I’d guess that nobody else who saw the message that day had the slightest idea that this little word represented one of the oldest programming mistakes in the book.

It’s the User, Stupid (It’s the Stupid User?)

29 March, 2009 by sky 2 Comments

In The Curious Case of the Invulnerable Browser, Roger Grimes of Infoworld writes about the recent CanSecWest 2009 PWN2OWN contest where hackers pitted their skills against web browsers to see how quickly they could break into a computer. The prize was the computer itself. Roger says that the state of browser security is actually pretty good, but even if browsers were inpenetrable, the major source of computer breakins is users browsing to a web site that then infects their computer. [Read more…]

Essential Strategies for Eventually Launching a Site

22 February, 2009 by sky Leave a Comment

I was reading Dion Hinchcliff’s “50 Essential Strategies for Creating a Successful Web 2.0 Product” (you should go read it when you have more time) and I’ve cherry-picked the points that ring true for me. His points are good and very interesting, but some are real gems of wisdom^[1]. And I’ll add some of my own observations to this article. I’ll limit mine to 10 and if you’re ambitious you can read the 50 in his blog. One of the overarching principles is that, as he says, “The Web Community Gets Smarter Every Time It Builds A Product” – which I will exend to add that we marketers and developers are constantly learning, and the more we involve people early in our development processes, and the more closely we listen to them, the faster and better our development cycles will be.
[Read more…]

How to Embed Flickr Slideshows in WordPress blogs

7 February, 2009 by sky 2 Comments

The old method for embedding a Flickr slideshow in a WordPress blog no longer works after WP 2.1. Flickr creates really nice Flash-driven slideshows and there’s easy HTML code to embed these shows on regular web pages, but the code doesn’t work on WordPress-driven sites because the (tinyMCE) editor software removes the code. Now there’s a solution. [Read more…]