• PyCon 2011: How Dropbox Did It and How Python Helped – PyCon US Videos – 2009, 2010, 2011 – blip.tv – This talk will give an overview of the first two years of Dropbox, the team formation, our early guiding principles and philosophies, what worked for us and what we learned while building the company and engineering infrastructure. It will also cover why Python was essential to the success of the project and the rough edges we had to overcome to make it our long term programming environment and runtime
• High Scalability – High Scalability – 6 Lessons from Dropbox – One Million Files Saved Every 15 minutes – Dropbox saves one million files every 15 minutes, more tweets than even Twitterers tweet
• Microsoft SQL Azure vs. Amazon RDS – DevelopMentor – There are two major differences between the Microsoft SQL Azure and Amazon RDS platforms: pricing and capabilities. If price is no object and the user wants full features and high performance, then RDS is the obvious choice
• InfoQ: Adopting Apache Cassandra – Eben Hewitt introduces the Apache Cassandra project to those interested in getting a quick clear picture of what Cassandra is, what are its main features, what is the the data model used and the API.
• codeartisan: RSA Public Key Cryptography in Java – Public key cryptography is a well-known concept, but for some reason the JCE (Java Cryptography Extensions) documentation doesn't at all make it clear how to interoperate with common public key formats such as those produced by openssl
• Google Web Toolkit Blog: Update on GWT support for IE9 – In keeping with the GWT philosophy of making it possible to write no-compromise AJAX in any modern browser, GWT 2.3 (in progress) will support IE9
• kryo.se: iodine (IP-over-DNS, IPv4 over DNS tunnel) – iodine lets you tunnel IPv4 data through a DNS server. This can be usable in different situations where internet access is firewalled, but DNS queries are allowed.
• Shearing FireSheep with the Cloud | Stratum Security Blog – Quite simply, the solution I came up with was to create an EC2 instance with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS server and setup OpenVPN and SideStep. This allows me to route all of my traffic over an SSL or SSH VPN to my EC2 instance and then out to the Internet.
• Learn Scala the Fun Way: With Processing – Processing is a simple programming language for creating visualizations. It's meant to be easy for non-programmers to learn. Artists can use Processing to create generative at programs known as sketches
• iPhone vs. Android – 45,000 Tests Prove Whose Browser is Faster | Blaze.io – Android’s browser is faster. MUCH faster. On average, Android 2.3 was a 52% faster than iPhone 4.3, with a median load time of 2.144 seconds vs. iPhone’s median load time of 3.254 seconds

Daily del.icio.us for March 17th through March 19th

• Sun’s Six Biggest Mistakes – Forbes.com – In the interest of exploring Sun's value to history students, if not its shareholders, we asked analysts and industry watchers where Sun went wrong.
• Protovis – A graphical toolkit for visualization – Protovis is a visualization toolkit for JavaScript using the canvas element. It takes a graphical approach to data visualization, composing custom views of data with simple graphical primitives like bars and dots.
• SitePen Blog » Stocker: Advanced Dojo Made Easy – SitePen is excited to announce Stocker, which demonstrates some of the more advanced capabilities of Dojo, including the newly released DataChart, the DataGrid, Data Store, Comet, Persevere, and BorderContainer.
• Why baseball benched Microsoft Silverlight | Digital Media – CNET News – The thwacking sounds of bats striking balls will once again fill stadiums, as Monday is opening day for Major League Baseball. This year, Microsoft will watch from the sidelines.

  MLB.com no longer uses Microsoft's Silverlight to stream games to its 500,000 subscribers. This season fans will watch live and on-demand video via Adobe's Flash player.

• Internal cloud’s big test: Amazon vs. Cloudera | The Wisdom of Clouds – CNET News – The announcement on Thursday of Amazon's new Hadoop-based Elastic MapReduce service, combined with the introduction of a commercial Hadoop distribution from start-up Cloudera, means that we finally have a reasonable means of watching which directions enterprise IT prefers.
• I.B.M. Withdraws $7 Billion Offer for Sun Microsystems – NYTimes.com – After weeks of negotiations, I.B.M. withdrew its $7 billion bid for Sun Microsystems on Sunday, one day after Sun’s board balked at a reduced offer, according to three people close to the talks.
• Digital Domain – Web-Based Competition for Microsoft Word – NYTimes.com – The best online word processor, however, may be the one from a tiny company, Zoho, a nimble innovator. Zoho Writer is running close enough to Word to imagine that it and other online word processors will be able to do most everything that Word can do, and more.
• Outside the Box() » Ext Core vs. JQuery – Both Ext Core and JQuery are solid, complete base JavaScript libraries. JQuery leans towards simplicity while Ext Core offers enhanced configuration. The choice of which to use will come down to where you are now.
• Ext JS – Ext Core 3.0 Beta Released – the Ext Team is proud to announce the immediate availability of Ext Core 3.0 beta for download. Ext Core provides a cross-browser consistent API for performing the most common tasks in JavaScript development for web pages. Ext Core is released under a permissive MIT license – there is no cost to use Ext Core – it's free for everyone.
• SaveIE6: Help us save the best browser around – These days we are inundated with bloated web browsers that overcomplicate our lives. However, there is one eminent exception: IE6. It has been around since 2001 and is still one of the most powerful and versatile browsers available.

Daily del.icio.us for April 3rd through April 7th

• Writing good unit tests, Part 1: Follow your GUTs – JavaWorld – Just like production code, test code needs to be rigorously examined to ensure it's clean and bug free. In this first half of a two-part article, Klaus Berg makes the case for why good unit tests are as important as high-quality production code, then provides a comprehensive listing of agile tools and best practices used to improve the internal quality of test code
• Flux: Java Job Scheduler. File Transfer. Workflow. – Flux – Flux is an embeddable, pure Java solution that increases productivity by meeting the challenges of Job Scheduling, File Transfer, and Workflow
• Are Cloud Based Memory Architectures the Next Big Thing? | High Scalability – We are on the edge of two potent technological changes: Clouds and Memory Based Architectures. This evolution will rip open a chasm where new players can enter and prosper. Google is the master of disk. You can't beat them at a game they perfected.
• Hadoop, Analytical Software, Finds Uses Beyond Search – NYTimes.com – MapReduce represented a couple of breakthroughs. The technology has allowed Google’s search software to run faster on cheaper, less-reliable computers, which means lower capital costs. In addition, it makes manipulating the data Google collects so much easier that more engineers can hunt for secrets about how people use the company’s technology instead of worrying about keeping computers up and running.
• Update: Cisco enters server market with Unified Computing System | InfoWorld | News | 2009-03-16 | By Marc Ferranti, Elizabeth Montalbano and Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service – Cisco's new data-center architecture comprises compute, network, storage access and virtualization resources in a single rackable system designed to cut IT infrastructure costs and complexity, stretch existing IT investments and allow enterprise customers to build an agile data center that they can easily extend for future growth, according to the company.
• America cheers as satirist, Jon Stewart, delivers knockout blow to TV finance gurus | World news | The Observer – For the past 10 days the US has been gripped. Even President Obama tuned in as the country's foremost TV comic, Jon Stewart, unleashed an extraordinary broadside against TV's top financial commentators for their part in the unfolding economic crisis.
• Useful scripts to plot charts in web pages – In this post I want to suggest you a list of some interesting scripts you can use to plot easily charts (line, area, pie, bar…) in your web pages using jQuery, MooTools, Prototype and other JS frameworks
• Better batteries are on their way | Batteries now included | The Economist – The result is a material that, when tested in experimental batteries, was able to charge and discharge in a few seconds. In the future, therefore, that weekend in the south of France need not be interrupted by running out of juice
• The Positive Legacy of C++ and Java – In a recent discussion, there were assertions that C++ was a poorly-designed language. I was on the C++ Standards Committee for 8 years, and saw the decisions take place. I think it's helpful to understand the language choices for both C++ and Java in order to see the bigger perspective.
• AWS "sucks the air out of the room." Cuts EC2 costs by 50% [Article] « elc technologies – Amazon's goal is to enter a market and "suck the air out of the room." Yes–that room is now your server room; the market is your internal IT infrastructure cost center. EC2 had an effective price cut today of 50% of its server usage fees

Daily del.icio.us for March 14th through March 19th

• Gbridge Does Simple but Secure File Sharing, Syncing, and VNC – Gbridge is a free software that lets you sync folders, share files, chat and VNC securely and easily. It extends Google's gtalk service to a VPN (Virtual Private Network) that connects your computers and your close friends' computers directly and securely. Gbridge has many unique features.
• Space4J – Java Persistence – Space4J is a simple database system that will let you work with Java Collections in memory. Instead of having to perform a SQL SELECT to fetch a User from a database table, you can just access the users map (java.util.Map) and call users.get(id). With Space4J, all your data is kept in memory inside the JVM. There is no need for an extra database application
• VMware Sees the Open Source Threat | OStatic – With Microsoft and Sun (along with Linux players) bundling virtualization with their server software, and ongoing improvements in open source virtualization offerings such as Xen, I've predicted before and I now predict more than ever that VMware has to radically change its business model.
• Spring Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach | Javalobby – This wonderful book, Spring Recipes, covers in a very decent way Spring 2.5 from basic to advanced and in many cases some compatible configurations for 1.x, scalable. It is a way to learn each chapter throught the book, 19 well-organized chapters that cover the most important topics in the J2EE world with Spring, and of course, Spring core itself
• DimeCasts.Net Details for # 46 – Setting up Continuous Integration for your Application with Team City – In this episode we will walk you though how setup and manage a Continuous Integration system using Team City for your application.

  You will get a guided tour on the various steps needed to get your CI enviornment up and running in no time flat.

• InfoQ: Mockito 1.5 spies on plain objects – Mockito is a mocking framework for Java. It's very similar to EasyMock and jMock, but eliminates the need for expectations by verifying what has been called after execution. Other mocking libraries require you to record expectations before execution, which tends to result in ugly setup code
• McCain’s Scapegoat – WSJ.com – In a crisis, voters want steady, calm leadership, not easy, misleading answers that will do nothing to help. Mr. McCain is sounding like a candidate searching for a political foil rather than a genuine solution. He'll never beat Mr. Obama by running as an angry populist like Al Gore, circa 2000
• Java Parallel Processing Framework Home Page – JPPF is an open source Grid Computing platform written in Java that makes it easy to run applications in parallel, and speed up their execution by orders of magnitude. Write once, deploy once, execute everywhere!
• JPPF, grid computing platform for Java, releases version 1.5 – JPPF is an open source Grid Computing platform written in Java that makes it easy to run applications in parallel, and speed up their execution by orders of magnitude. Write once, deploy once, execute everywhere!
• Cisco buys into corporate IM | Business Tech – CNET News – On Friday, the networking giant Cisco announced it will purchase Jabber, which uses an open-source IM and presence protocol used by Google Talk and Gizmo

Daily del.icio.us for September 19th through September 21st