Google buys wiki maker JotSpot

Google bought a California firm called Jotspot which makes wikis.

Wikis let people share things online, the best example of the genre being Wikipedia.

Google didn't say how much it paid for Jotspot. I will keep you all updated with
the latest happenings for this.

http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-6131024.html

Open source foundation (OSF)

Open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials--typically, their source code.

Source code is available for free distrubution and we can make necessary changes.

Open source foundation is a foundation which helps to maintain an open source community and sell the idea of open source.

www.newsforge.com is a site which gives update open source news

For more information on open source, please check

http://www.developer.com/open/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source

Want to know how things work ? Check check this site

Hi all..

Recently I came across a very good web site. It is called http://www.howstuffworks.com/

It teaches us how things work. A really good site. There is a section completely dedicated for
computers. Some of the topics covered are :

1. How Computer Viruses Work
2. How Bits and Bytes Work
3. How C Programming Works
4. How can a totally logical machine like a computer generate a random number?
5. How Chess Computers Work
6. How does the e-mail notification in my Web browser work?

You can subscribe for newsletters from them by giving our email id (I have already subscribed to this site and they send me the latest things in the site).

You all could try it. The information it contains is so good and vast.

Ok then..have a nice day..bye
sijith

Intel Core Duo processor on first place in PC world top 100 products of 2006

Didnt u people hear the news. PC world released the top 100 products of the year and the first position goes to Intel core duo (That will be a good news to the Intel team).

Apple ipod nano got 4th place. Google earth is in 6th. Mozilla firefix 1.5 is on 12 the position.
Google search engine got 17th place while google desktop is on 47th rank. You tube is on 9th. meebo is on 65th rank.

I am surprised not to see google maps on the list while yahoo maps beta is in 56th position and Microsoft live local is on 39 .The map service from google using that cool AJAX technology is much better than yahoo and microsoft. But I should agree microsoft has also done a good job in microsoft maps in the http://local.live.com/

For the complete list please visit the below web site link.

http://pcworld.com/article/id,125706-page,13/article.html

ok then.bye for now
sijith

Oracle to have its Linux version

That is a really surprising news to me. Oracle being a database vendor is going to have it own version of Linux. According to the news sources, Oracle is going to have its version from the Red Hat Linux binaries.

Oracle, the giant database company, says it's now going to take Red Hat's software, remove the logos, and sell it for a lower price. And it will keep doing it:

After this news, the stock prices of Red hat has come down. But from the Red Hat Linux side,
they commented that this move from oracle is good for the open source community as a whole.

For more reading, use the below links
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3640331
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6130071.html

sijith

Microsoft and Mozilla head to head with IE7 and Firefox 2.0

Two competitors and in the ring again. Microsoft with their IE and mozilla with firefox 2.0.
Microsoft is inside the game with another web browser after a long wait. Without this release, firefox would have swiped away the growing browser market. Opera, and others are well beyond the popularity of firefox.

I have one more news .Starting on tuesday, you can create create subsets of the whole Google search engine, then do interesting things with them. In short, it's a way to carve off chunks of Google and customize them into a specialty search engine with a specific focus.

I created a sample one and it was lot of fun. wanna try for your self.then go to this link
http://www.google.com/coop/cse/

Ok then..bye for now
sijith

A nice video on what google is about and some plans and insight

Hi all..

check out this video which talks about google and its future plans.
Really good one.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7137075178977335350&q=owner:ucberkeley+is141

By for now
Sijith

10 Programming Languages you should learn right NOW

Hi all..welcome back...i hope you all find my blog site exciting and informative.

Today I just want to give a list of 10 programming languages which, according to eweek magazine,are bonus for developers to add to their resumes

1. PHP

An open-source, interpretive, server-side, cross-platform, HTML scripting language, especially well-suited for Web development as it can be embedded into HTML pages

2. C#

A general-purpose, compiled, object-oriented programming language developed by Microsoft as part of its .NET initiative, it evolved from C and C++

3.AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)

Though technically not a programming language, AJAX uses XHTML or HTML, JavaScript and XML to create interactive Web applications. Ever since Google Maps put AJAX, well, on the map, the requests for AJAX-knowledgeable pros went through the roof

4.JavaScript

Not to be confused with Java, JavaScript is a an object-oriented, scripting programming language that runs in the Web browser on the client side. It's smaller than Java, with a simplified set of commands, easier to code and doesn't have to be compiled.

5.Perl

Perl is an open-source, cross-platform, server-side interpretive programming language used extensively to process text through CGI programs.

6.C

"Learning C is crucial. Once you learn C, making the jump to Java or C# is fairly easy, because a lot of the syntax is common

7. Ruby and Ruby on Rails

Ruby is a dynamic, object-oriented, open-source programming language; Ruby on Rails is an open-source Web application framework written in Ruby that closely follows the MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture.

8. Java

An object-oriented programming language developed by James Gosling and colleagues at Sun Microsystems in the early 1990s. Java is a "beautiful" language, it is central to the non-.Net programming experience.

9. Python

An interpreted, dynamically object-oriented, open-source programming language that utilizes automatic memory management.

10. VB.Net (Visual Basic .Net)

An object-oriented language implemented on Microsoft's .Net framework.Most argue that VB.Net is currently more popular than ever and one of the only "must-learns." "It is currently dominating in adoption and that is where all the work is," said Huckaby.

To read the entire eweek article, please use the link below

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2016415,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594

First Computer Bug

In 1945, Grace Murray Hopper was working on the Harvard University Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator (a primitive computer).

On the 9th of September, 1945, when the machine was experiencing problems, an investigation showed that there was a moth trapped between the points of Relay #70, in Panel F.

The operators removed the moth and affixed it to the log. (See the picture below.) The entry reads: "First actual case of bug being found."

The word went out that they had "debugged" the machine and the term "debugging a computer program" was born.

What you expect may not be what computers gives out

We were discussing few of the assignment problems in our C class. Our instructor showed a simple printf statement.

int k = 1234567890;
printf("%5i",k);

He asked us what is the output for the above program. We all said the answer would be 12345, but we were told that the computer would print the entire numbers. (test this for yourself if you have any doubt). Computer didn't make any mistake here but we made the mistake of not knowing the correct functionality of %5i.

Even this had happened to me before where I assume this is the way it would work till I start coding. Once I start the coding process, a lot of new questions about my initial assumption would come, till I finally conclude I am wrong.

moral of the whole story is "Always try to test the assumptions before you conclude".

Another vista build from microsoft

Microsoft has made available to the users another vista build. The build number 5808, looks like a fixes to the previous bugs reported in the previous RC2.

This was made available to participants in Microsoft's Technology Adoption Program (TAP) late on October 19.

Vista version Rc1 is available for download from microsoft site, but Rc2 is available only to MSDN , technet subscribers.

Microsoft has done pretty big investment on vista and we need to see how this product
will be able to catch the market.

Seven Habits of Highly Effective Programmers

Hi...I hope you all have read the book "seven habits of highly effective people" by steven covey. It is a best seller classic book and a highly recommended one for self-improvement.

I was browsing the net today and found an article which says "seven habits of highly effective programmer'. After going through the article, I found them very practical and important to a software programmer. So here I give a summary of that article.

Habit1 :Understand Your Requirements

The first step in becoming an effective programmer is to ensure that you are spending your time wisely. And there is no greater waste of time than in working on something that is not useful or never shipped.

We need to have demonstrable system working as early as possible.
Once you have something working, don't just leave it as a "proof of concept". Let people play with it, see their reactions, and let this guide and prioritize your development.

Habit 2 :Keep It Real

Keep your software running in as close to a shipping state as possible. You never know when you'll have to demo the system, send out an evaluation copy, or even deliver ("OK, time to wrap things up!")

Use real data : If you just test with sample data, that big iceberg of real data out there is going to sink your program.
Use real builds : Remember the development build on your machine is not the real build.

Habit3: Understand Your Code

Life is full of wonderful mysteries, but your code is not the place for them. You don't have to know how your car works - if the engine starts making strange noises, you drop it off the mechanic. When it comes to your code, if you don't understand how it works, or doesn't work, no one will.

Code with style : Give proper intents and comments so that your code is readable.
The opposite of stylish programming is cut-and-paste. Grab some code from somewhere that is supposed to do something like what you want, tweak it until it sort of works, stir, repeat, and voila, you have the software equivalent of mystery meat.

Keep it clean: you should periodically inspect your code, sweep up accumulated hard-coded numbers, outdated comments, misleading function names, or you'll inevitably end up with uninhabitable code that's embarrassing to show anyone else

Habit4: Optimal Programming

People always talk about "optimization", but that isn't really a correct word. We're rarely shooting for the optimum - instead, we make improvements and tradeoffs to achieve good-enough performance. The main aim is to get the things done in less number of lines and less system overhead.

Habit5:Manage Thyself

We have to manage ourself to complete the program. We should have a good initial estimate on the task completion time and track our progress to make sure we are in the right direction.
Bugs may come and we may have to break our head to solve it(this is very natural), we should try our best to keep the deadline (even if we have to spend some sleepless nights).

Habit6:Continuous Education

This can be called "sharpening the saw". We know there are many articles and books available on latest things. We should always try to do the things in smarter way than just getting the result. This smartness comes by continuously educating ourself. Just about everything you need is on the Internet tutorials, discussion lists, and free softwares. All you need is the hardware and a broadband connection.

Habit7:R-E-S-P-E-C-T

We should have the respect of our peers and managers, at least in the technical capabilities to have the control of your work and influence over others.

Asking intelligent questions that enhance others' respect for you is a professional skill. A good question that exposes unresolved issues tells people that you know your stuff and you're sharp enough to catch all the implications. Asking for clarification about a specification shows you know how to find and read the spec and your ability to detect ambiguities.

Let everyone know that you read the documentation and googled the subject.

The above article is just a summary of the main article I found on net. For more reading please use the below link

http://www.technicat.com/writing/programming.html

bye for now
sijith

Google aquires you tube for $1.6 billion. waw !!!!!

Did u people hear the news. Google has aquired youtube for a massive $1.6 billion . The service is not quite two years old and already it's worth $1.6 billion (!)—or at least it is to Google.

Founded in in February 2005, YouTube is a consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos worldwide through a Web experience. Every body in the industry had a watch on youtube. But google did the quick move. No one would have estimated the real worth of youtube , than google, the young innovative software giant.

In one sense, I should call google young because compared to other industry head, google was founded very recently.(1998). But I may be wrong, if i dont put the word Giant to it. This young company has now questioned the very survival of many peers of the field.

Steve Balmer said that they could create youtube site themself. But the point they didnt see is the community of users behind youtube. The site currently delivers more than 100 million video views every day with 65000 new video uploaded daily.

This wopping server space remembers me on the concept of server farm, a collection of reliable servers to save all these massive informations. Creation of server farm and the race of the IT giants to do this is really nice to watch. I will be covering this topic, in one of my future blogs.

Ajax - the new buzz word in IT

Hi all

I hope you have tried google maps. If not then , it is a must try web site , www.maps.google.com.

These guys have really done a wonderfull job by coming up with such a site. It allows browsing of maps same as you do a PC software.

The main idea behind this is AJAX (Asynchronous java and Xml), which retrieves the data from the server without re loading the page. Ajax has now become a buzz word amoung software developers and it professionals.

The latest news on ajax is researchers at Brown University have created a new programming language for developing Web applications, known as Flapjax.

I also have done some coding on Ajax using .net platform. Microsoft has released "Atlas",which is a library to develop ajax type codes. www.http://atlas.asp.net.This runs in .net 2.0 platform. I had downloaded the library and tutorials in C# last week and it was a real fun to play with it.

I will be soon writing a technical article on the development of ajax enabled programs.

By the way, windows has also launched an ajax enabled map site, check out www.local.live.com
These guys also have a lot of hard work to complete this site (we can understand it by looking at the site). But as a review, I would rate google maps better than windows. But I am sure windows will be coming up with more interactive web sites like this.

As I said yesterday, the firefox browser 2.0 is now ready for download. You can download them from the below link

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/2.0/releasenotes/

sijith

Firefox 2.0 getting ready for release

At last, the much awaited firefox 2.0 version is now getting ready for public release.
Tomorrow we would be able to download the latest release candidate of firefox.

This release will be followed by release candidate 3 which will be represent final code for the long awaited 2.0 browser.

Firefox, a browser from mozilla, has captured about 15 % of the global browser market.
It is said that even though firefix 2.0 is yet to be released, work is in full swing for the development of version 3.0, whose expected date of release is late next year.

And I have one more news today. Microsoft has agreed to open the source code of vista kernal to antivirus companies like McCafee and Symmantic so that they can develop their softwares accordingly. This was announced today by Steve Balmer today. He also said that this move will increase the compliance with the European Commission's demands.

Patch guard feature to be shipped with 64 bit version of windows vista

Microsoft always consider security breaching of their software a main problem and patch guard is a feature introduced by windows in their up coming windows vista operating system 64 bit version. This feature restrict program access to the operating system kernel, which is also called the heart of the operating system.

Security software vendors Symantec Corp. and McAfee Inc. say the Patch Guard technology prevents the use of certain features in third-party tools that would make Windows safer from hackers. McAfee last week took out a full-page advertisement in London’s Financial Times newspaper and charged that Microsoft’s use of Patch Guard is anticompetitive behavior.

Microsoft, meanwhile, contends that the technology itself closes the 64-bit Windows kernel to unauthorized access.

Anyway this feature is now available to 64 bit versions only and not the normal 32 bit version available for desktop users.

Will google take on Microsoft ?

Over the past few weeks, there is an heated discussion going on in the web community regarding whether microsoft will be able retain the title as the "leading software company". If you look at the history of microsoft ,we can find that they visioned the future and worked out to acheive it. Bill gates and paul allen know where they are heading to. The target was clear. And due to this they were able to take on the rivals IBM and began to lead the market.

The idea of softwares selling as a "BOX" is now coming down. It is now called "Software-service" , where the softwares are actually installed in remote systems (huge server machines) and the users just needs a browser to access those services. Users could save their docs in the server space provided by the companies and access them where ever they want. With the huge improvement in bandwidth speed and internet facilites, computers are now becoming as a terminal to the main computer network (Internet).

There are many rivals for microsoft , eg google, yahoo, apple, IBM,etc , but we all know that google is the main rival for microsoft. Bill gates and Ray Ozzie (Current chief software architect of microsoft) current issues memos which confirms the above fact.

But the fact to be considered is google was a company established in 1998 and within 8 years, there are now head to head with the worlds largest software company. The main success behind google is they know where they want to go. They want to give service free to users and get money from advertisers. This is like a Win-Win scenario.

They made their search engine the worlds best search engine. They come up with google earth, google maps, gmail ,google code search, and the recently launched docs and spread sheet. They are quickly adapting the Web 2.0 to all their applications and this is a good decision they made.

The recent aquiring of youtube.com makes the message more clear. If microsoft needs to remain on top , they have to quickly adapt and come up more innovative softwares which run as services and get the acceptance of the users. Windows live.com is a good initiative from them, but need to see how they will be able to carry it forward.

Welcome to sijith's blog space

Hi all, welcome board to sijith's blog space

This is sijith salim here from United states . I did my graduation from India and reached US on sept 1st 2006.

I am a student of University of New Haven , Connecticut doing masters in computer science.

This blog will be mainly containing latest technology news and updated happening in the world.
We will talk about software companies, their latest products and ventures and the news on various new technologies being introduced in the IT world. Also Iwill discuss on latest webcasts and IT events happening in the world.

I hope this will be a nice experience for me and you all. I am available in the email id
sijith101@hotmail.com

Sijith