• Kind of Screwed – Waxy.org – At the heart of this settlement is a debate that's been going on for decades, playing out between artists and copyright holders in and out of the courts.
• rest-client – Java application to test RESTful webservices – RESTClient is a Java application to test RESTful webservices. It can be used to test variety of HTTP communications. From version 2.3, it has two executable Jars:
• Extremely Decoupled Architecture for Web Applications (EDAWA); Part 1: Vertical Decoupling | Javalobby – Vertical decoupling brings the opportunity to exchange the whole technology stack including programming language, runtime environment, operating system or whatever.
• What’s Up, JavaDoc? (Jonathan Gibbons) – The Java documentation tool, javadoc, has been somewhat neglected in recent releases, but in JDK 7, it's been getting some amount of long-overdue TLC, albeit mostly under the covers.
• Announcing GitHub for Mac – GitHub – Pull requests, merge button, fork queue, issues, pages, wiki –– all awesome features that make sharing easier. But those things are only great after you've pushed your code to GitHub. Today we're happy to announce GitHub for Mac.
• InfoQ: Where Did My Architecture Go? – Eoin Woods advices on writing code that preserves the initial architectural design using conventions, dependency analysis, module systems, augmenting the code & checking rules, and language extensions.
• CWE – Common Weakness Enumeration: A Community-developed dictionary of software weakness types – International in scope and free for public use, CWE™ provides a unified, measurable set of software weaknesses that is enabling more effective discussion, description, selection, and use of software security tools and services that can find these weaknesses in source code and operational systems as well as better understanding and management of software weaknesses related to architecture and design.
• Lessons in Software Reliability – Java Code Geeks – Ensure that you build support across the organization, build a culture that puts reliability first. Like any change, it will require patience, commitment, and unrelenting followup.
• Amazon Web Services Blog: Now Available: Amazon EC2 Running Red Hat Enterprise Linux – I'm pleased to be able to tell you that you can now run Red Hat Enterprise Linux on EC2 with support from Amazon and Red Hat
• Raible Designs | Java Web Application Security – Part V: Penetrating with Zed Attack Proxy – In this article, I've shown you how to pentest a web application using Firefox and OWASP's Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP). I found ZAP to be a nice tool for figuring out vulnerabilities, but it'd be nice if it had a "retest" feature to see if you fixed an issue for a particular URL.
• My “NoSQL for Java Devs” slides are now online « Glen Smith – In the talk we looked at four different types of NoSQL options for Java guys: Simple Key/Value in-memory stores (Memcached), sophisticated distributed key/value stores (Voldemort), Document Databases (CouchDB), and Graph Databases (Neo4j).
• An introduction to MongoDB – In this short demo, long-time developerWorks contributor Andrew Glover introduces MongoDB, provides a quick tour of its use, and helps you understand where it's most applicable
• An introduction to Amazon SimpleDB – an introduction to SimpleDB, a massively scalable, highly available key/value datastore. Part of the Amazon Web Services suite, SimpleDB provides a simple web services interface to create and store multiple data sets, query the data, and return the results. Get started with SimpleDB in this short introduction.
• InfoQ: 5 Classic Patterns in Everyday Code – Michael Wood explains the importance of using patterns in software design, exemplifying with Adapter, Decorator, Command, and several Factory patterns.
• The Big Idea: Before You Make That Big Decision… – Harvard Business Review – In this article, we will describe a straightforward way to detect bias and minimize its effects in the most common kind of decision that executives make: reviewing a recommendation from someone else and determining whether to accept it, reject it, or pass it on to the next level.
• Not doing Code Reviews? What’s your excuse? – Java Code Geeks – Reviews don’t need to be a big deal, you don’t need formal review meetings. And there are tools to help make reviews cheaper, easier and more effective. So, what about the rest of you? Why aren’t you doing code reviews? What’s your excuse?
• InfoQ: New Books on Software Architecture – Software Architecture is one of the important topics for software engineers, because many failures of software development projects are caused by inadequate design. Thus, it is essential to learn more about architectural issues in theory and practice. Interesting new books that have been published recently or in the near future could be very helpful:
• Cassandra vs MongoDB vs CouchDB vs Redis vs Riak vs HBase comparison :: KKovacs – In this light, here is a comparison of Cassandra, Mongodb, CouchDB, Redis, Riak, Membase, Neo4j and HBase:
• » GWT Dependency Injection recipes using GIN (III) » Canoo RIA Blog – In my opinion, dependency injection allows a much cleaner structure, enables configuring the application in an elegant and easy way and, when used together with an event bus, produces low-coupled high-modular applications.
• Sencha touch – show loading mask anywhere | Schogini – If, you need to show a load mask anywhere (not necessarily linked to a store) then you can do something like this:

Links for June 20th through June 23rd

• Amazon Web Services Blog: Live Streaming With Amazon CloudFront and Adobe Flash Media Server – You can now stream live audio or video through AWS using the Adobe Flash Media Server using a cost-effective pay-as-you-go model that makes uses of Amazon EC2, Amazon CloudFront, and Amazon Route 53, all configured and launched via a single CloudFormation template.
• FunctionSource: Coping with Over Four Hundred Devices: How Netflix Uses HTML5 to Deliver Amazing User Interfaces – The Netflix story provides a clear example of a company achieving success with cross-platform HTML5.
• A writable API competition – O’Reilly Radar – In conjunction with the Fluidinfo writable API for O'Reilly books and authors that was announced today, we're holding a developer competition.
• How the mobile web will win | VentureBeat – So I’m here today to say that the debate is over: The web will win, but it won’t be the web of 2005. The iPhone and other mobile devices have forever changed the way users perceive software
• A Java package dependency analyzer that generates design quality metrics. – GitHub – JDepend traverses Java class and source file directories and generates design quality metrics for each Java package. JDepend allows you to automatically measure the quality of a design in terms of its extensibility, reusability, and maintainability to effectively manage and control package dependencies.
• Defying Data Gravity « McCrory’s Blog – Data Gravity is a theory around which data has mass. As data (mass) accumulates, it begins to have gravity. This Data Gravity pulls services and applications closer to the data
• CoffeeScript is an attempt to expose the good parts of JavaScript in a simple way. – CoffeeScript is a little language that compiles into JavaScript. Underneath all of those embarrassing braces and semicolons, JavaScript has always had a gorgeous object model at its heart. CoffeeScript is an attempt to expose the good parts of JavaScript in a simple way.
• JavaScript Garden – collection of documentation about the most quirky parts of the JavaScript programming language – JavaScript Garden is a growing collection of documentation about the most quirky parts of the JavaScript programming language. It gives advice to avoid common mistakes, subtle bugs, as well as performance issues and bad practices that non-expert JavaScript programmers may encounter on their endeavours into the depths of the language.
• Sass – Syntactically Awesome Stylesheets – Sass makes CSS fun again. Sass is an extension of CSS3, adding nested rules, variables, mixins, selector inheritance, and more. It’s translated to well-formatted, standard CSS using the command line tool or a web-framework plugin.
• State Street modernizing with cloud, Linux technologies – Virtualization, State Street, software, server, operating systems, open source, non-Windows, Linux, internet, hardware systems, Data Center, Configuration / maintenance, cloud computing – ARN – State Street Corporation says technology must evolve to meet the increasingly demanding needs of financial services, and within its own data centers is adopting new cloud-like technologies and placing a greater emphasis on Linux and open source.

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

• InfoQ: Continuous Delivery – Jez Humble talks on the importance of Continuous Delivery for a business, outlining the foundational principles and practices to be implemented for a successful CD, explaining how to do continuous integration, various ways of testing, canary releasing, and migrating data.
• Arduino – HomePage – Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It's intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments
• Git and Social Coding: How to Merge Without Fear | SpringSource Team Blog – Git is great for social coding and community contributions to open source projects: contributors can try out the code easily, and there can be hordes of people all forking and experimenting with it but without endangering existing users.
• A Visual Guide to Version Control | BetterExplained – A Visual Guide to Version Control
• 500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
• Avoid switch! Use enum! « Schneide Blog – Avoid switch! Use enum!
• Crap4j Home – The CRAP metric combines cyclomatic complexity and code coverage from automated tests (e.g. JUnit tests) to help you identify code that might be particularly difficult to understand, test, or maintain
• Best CSS3 Animation Demos and Tutorials – Today we are showcasing a post on CSS3 Animation featuring best awesome functions. CSS3 is full of amazing features, some of which are less explored. One of its most amazing feature is CSS3 Animation, which is fun and frolic
• InfoQ: Josh Bloch on Java and Programming – In this interview, Google’s Josh Bloch shares his views on the open-source Java landscape as well as on the future of the Java language, including changes being implemented via Project Coin. Bloch also discusses support for multi-core in programming languages, support for multiple languages on the JVM, Java pain points and the next big language.
• Facebook: Why our ‘next-gen’ comms ditched MySQL • The Register – Originally built by Powerset – a semantic search outfit now owned by Microsoft – HBase is part of the Apache Hadoop project, a sweeping effort to mimic Google's back-end infrastructure

Daily del.icio.us for December 19th through December 23rd

• OpenStack cloud platform to get Microsoft Hyper-V integration | ZDNet – The OpenStack project — an open-source cloud-computing platform created by RackSpace, NASA and a growing list of partners — is getting some support from Microsoft.
• Project ROME – Content creation and publishing for virtually anyone – Project ROME, an all-in-one content creation and publishing application for use at home, work or school*. It is intended for virtually anyone who wants to add the power of video, audio, photos, graphics, text or animation into everyday projects
• rc3.org – The future of Java on the Mac platform – There are huge advantages associated with being the platform of choice for developers. Apple should be very careful before it fritters away those advantages.
• Caapi Technologies Blog: SmartGWT vs. Ext GWT ( Or 80-20 rule of development ) – So probably some problems will arise and I don’t expect it to be perfect, but again on the rule of 80-20 the Ext GWT beats SmartGWT in almost all aspects. 
• KT Tunstall On World Cafe : NPR – In an age where the phrase "pop star" usually brings to mind flamboyant divas, Scottish pop-rock star KT Tunstall stands out. With a sound that seems to mesh Melissa Etheridge, Fiona Apple and Dido, she produces heartfelt music in a pop format with a knack for uncluttered, catchy songs.
• Google Web Toolkit Blog: Advancing cloud computing with integrated developer tools by Google and VMware – Earlier this year at Google I/O, we announced a collaboration between Google and VMware focused on making it easy to build business-oriented, cloud portable web apps. Today we are happy to announce that these tools will be generally available within the next few weeks
• IntelliJ IDEA 10: free IDE for Android development | JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA Blog – IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition gets a big addition: Android development plugin becomes available in the free edition of IntelliJ IDEA starting with version 1
• Enum Tricks: Dynamic Enums | Javalobby – In this article I would like to explain use case when dynamic enums are needed and how to implement them
• Java Power Tools – Keeping tabs on code quality – evolutions in code quality metrics – Code quality metrics are an important part of maintaining a healthy project, and reducing technical debt. Integrate code quality metrics reporting into your CI builds – this allows better project-wide reporting, and also makes your code quality metrics much more proactive.
• Assessing Ray Ozzie’s impact at Microsoft | Beyond Binary – CNET News – With nimble and powerful rivals like the Google and the Apple outmaneuvering Microsoft at various turns, the company needs not just someone adept at the helm, but also someone who knows the ins and outs of the waves well enough to spot foul weather on the horizon and plot a new course.
• jQuery Mobile Alpha 1 Released | jQuery Mobile – Today we’re pleased to announce the first alpha release of the jQuery Mobile project. jQuery Mobile is a user interface framework, built on top of jQuery, designed to simplify the process of building applications that target mobile devices.

Daily del.icio.us for October 17th through October 24th

• Aaron Johnson – Java Class.forName(String className) and JDBC – The most common answer you’ll hear is that it loads the database driver, which, while technically true, is shallow. Where does it get loaded? How does it happen? And why?
• http://jazzy.sourceforge.net/ – What exactly is Jazzy? Well, for developers, it is a set of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that allow you to add spell checking functionality to Java Applications easily.
• Code Simplicity » The Secret of Success: Suck Less – All you have to do to succeed in software is to consistently suck less with every release.
• Ext JS 3.0 – Be Outstanding – On behalf of the Ext Team, I am pleased to announce the final release of Ext JS 3.0. This release is the culmination of tens of thousands of hours of architecture, development and community feedback.
• Hank Paulson, AIG, and ethics – THE WEEK – The New York Times just “dumped a gigantic bucket of kerosene on the Goldman Sachs conspiracy fire,” said Joe Weisenthal in Clusterstock. The Times obtained records showing that then–Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was in steady contact with Goldman, his former firm, as the government was planning the AIG bailout last September
• /devel/talk: Choosing a web development framework/toolkit – So some of the questions I battle with are, which framework should I use for this new project, or am I using the right framework for my current project? Is the framework and language it's written in supports writing applications in a powerful, flexible, fast, scalable way?
• InfoQ: Google Chose Jetty for App Engine – Google App Engine was initially using Apache Tomcat as their webserver/servlet container but eventually switched to Jetty. This decision sparked many in the development community to ask why the change, was their something wrong with Tomcat?
• Shape of planet blogging – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com – In a way this goes beyond my original point, which was the unwillingness of the news media to referee a controversy by actually reporting the facts. Now it seems that a fact isn’t worth reporting unless someone is prepared to deny it.
• SugarCRM Releases Sugar Community Edition on the Microsoft Web Platform – SugarCRM, a world leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, announced today the availability of Sugar Community Edition on the Microsoft Web Platform
• Schumer: SEC to ban flash trading – MarketWatch – Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Tuesday that the Securities and Exchange Commission plans to ban so-called "flash trading," where high-frequency traders can get information just before it becomes public.

Daily del.icio.us for August 4th through August 13th

• Lincoln’s second inaugural address – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation#039;s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.
• Cairngorm – Cairngorm – Confluence – Cairngorm is the lightweight micro-architecture for Rich Internet Applications built in Flex or AIR. A collaboration of recognized design patterns, Cairngorm exemplifies and encourages best-practices for RIA development
• Selecting the Right Flex Application Framework | Summa Blog – The Flex community is divided between Adobe’s Cairngorm and Cliff Hall’s PureMVC, with strong arguments from both sides. However, your answer may just lie in the “it depends” space.

  This post aims to help you make that decision. It includes analysis of Cairngorm, PureMVC, and the new kid on the block, asfusion’s Mate.

• InfoQ: Pair Programming vs. Code Review – Pair programming and code review are each practices that improve the quality of software, as well as promote knowledge sharing. When the Agile vs. Lean, XP vs. Scrum, and vi vs. Emacs debates get slow, developers have been known to debate the merits of pair programming vs. code review. Theodore Nguyen-Cao described code reviewers as chickens, and paired programmers as pigs.
• InfoQ: Presentation: Kent Beck: Trends in Agile Development – In this presentation, Kent Beck, the father of eXtreme Programming, shows the synergies between business and Agile development. The reason Agile is becoming more popular every day is because it responds to the business needs as they evolve.
• terraza de aravaca: JPA implementations comparison: Hibernate, Toplink Essentials, Openjpa, Eclipselink – This article is a response to the lack of information on the net about the performance differences among the 4 most well known Java Persistence API (JPA) implementations: Toplink Essentials, EclipseLink, Hibernate and OpenJPA
• An Illustrated Guide to Git on Windows – This document is designed to show that using git on Windows is not a difficult process. In this guide, I will create a repository, make several commits, create a branch, merge a branch, search the commit history, push to a remote server, and pull from a remote server. The majority of this will be done using GUI tools.
• Farata Systems » Enterprise Development with Flex – first rough cuts – This groundbreaking book shows Flex developers exactly what’s required to build production-quality Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) for the enterprise. Part of the popular Adobe Developer Library co-published by O’Reilly and Adobe, Enterprise Development with Flex goes well beyond Flex tutorials and product documentation to suggest best practices, compare frameworks and tools, and offer efficient techniques for developing enterprise RIAs
• Choices Narrowed for First U.S. CTO – BusinessWeek – President-elect Obama has two executives in mind for the top technology job, one from Cisco and one from Washington, D.C. Both were born in India
• Welcome to WordPress.tv « Blog « WordPress.tv – To make it easy for you to find up-to-date, WordPress-themed video content within a couple of clicks. Without having to wade through spammy promotional videos, out-of-date content, and missing chunks of presentations
• John Goerzen on Why You Should Learn Haskell – O’Reilly Broadcast – John Goerzen is a co-author of Real World Haskell. In a recent interview with O#039;Reilly, he explained how the book came to be, the special magic which makes Haskell worth learning, and how to change your mindset to make learning possible.
• iFlyz grips your gadgets while uFlyz | Crave – CNET – To use the iFlyz, you attach your phone or media player to the suction cup, clamp it to a seat tray in either the stowed and locked position or unlocked and down position, and adjust the flexible gooseneck to the ideal viewing angle. It works with gadgets including the iPhone, Zune, and iPod.
• Xpress Suite Adds Automatic Java to iPhone Conversion | JAVA Developer’s Journal – Javaground announced a new component of its Xpress Suite allowing developers to automatically generate a native iPhone program from a Java source code.
• Felipe Gaucho’s Blog: Servlet 3.0 Unleashed – The specification of Servlet 3.0 was approved by the Public Review Ballot and it was also endorsed by the Java EE Executive Committee (EC).

Daily del.icio.us for January 15th through January 19th

• REST for Java developers, Part 1: It’s about the information, stupid – JavaWorld – When you need to invoke behavior in standard, contract-bound ways between disparate partners, SOAP is a good approach. If, on the other hand, you are looking to share information in flexible, scalable, reusable ways, then REST is a great approach
• InfoQ: Business Processes for SOA Governance – Prabhakar Mynampati, an Advisory Architect at IBM, published last week an article detailing 6 SOA Governance business processes. The article includes a BPMN-like process definitions for: Service identification, Service creation, Service testing, Service versioning and change management, Service management, and Service security
• InfoQ: Implementing SOA Governance – Governance is the combination of people, policies, and processes that an organization leverages to achieve desired behaviors. SOA governance is about achieving the desired behavior associated with, or attributed to, SOA adoption
• InfoQ: HP Releases Systinet 3.0 – HP announced the release of HP SOA Systinet 3.00, a market-leading service-oriented architecture (SOA) governance software. HP acquired Systinet as part of its acquisition of Mercury Interactive in 2006.
• InfoQ: Fostering Software Craftsmanship in a Corporate Setting – In this presentation filmed during Agile 2008, Scott Dillman talks about transforming developers into software craftsmen, people responsible for their work, continuously learning, taking pride in doing qualitative work, sharing knowledge and respecting professional standards.
• Introduction to WEB4J: Web development for minimalists – JavaWorld – As Java Web application frameworks have become more powerful and flexible, they've also become more complex. John O'Hanley's WEB4J framework in many ways flies in the face of this trend: it offers few customization options, but is easy to learn and work with
• Git Community Book – Welcome to the Git Community Book. This book has been built by dozens of people in the Git community, and is meant to help you learn how to use Git as quickly and easily as possible
• Android Developers Blog: Android is now Open Source – we're making what might just be the most exciting announcement of all: we and our Open Handset Alliance partners have now released the source code for Android. There's a huge amount of code and content there, so head over to http://source.android.com/ for all the details.
• InfoQ: Flex for XML and JSON – Beauty and brains. Flex and Java. Or is it the other way around? Who can say? What I know is that Flex and Java work really well together to create amazing Rich Internet applications (RIAs)
• How I Turned Down $300,000 from Microsoft to go Full-Time on GitHub – In the end, just as Indiana Jones could never turn down the opportunity to search for the Holy Grail, I could no less turn down the chance to work for myself on something I truly love, no matter how safe the alternative might be

Daily del.icio.us for October 20th through October 21st

• Ext JS – Ext 2.2 Released – We are pleased to announce the release of Ext 2.2, a fully backwards-compatible maintenance release of Ext. This is a recommended upgrade for all Ext 2.x users as it not only adds many new components and examples, but also provides a host of important bug
• InfoQ: FXStruts: Developing Flex-Friendly Struts Application – FxStruts is a free open source library that provides the same functionality as bean:write except that the output is in AMF or XML format. Simply point it to any plain Java object and you get Flex friendly AMF or XML output with ActionErrors and transactio
• Best enterprise open-source applications announced | The Open Road – The Business and Politics of Open Source by Matt Asay – CNET News.com – Infoworld does an annual review of the best enterprise open-source applications, called the BOSSies, and just announced the 2008 winners. An Infoworld editorial team makes the selections, so this isn't a matter of open-source projects rallying the troops
• My experience of coding a GWT webapp (~900 classes, ~20 GWT modules) – Google Web Toolkit | Google Groups – We put our GWT-based job site (http://www.careercommons.com) in production on Monday. This is a summary of my experience coding the whole thing in GWT. Not sure how useful this is for other people, but here it goes:
• Adam Bien’s Weblog : Useful Explanation: “iBATIS, Hibernate, and JPA: Which is right for you?”, Strange Conclusion – iBatis is the most powerful, but not that simple. It comes with highest amount of XML-configuration, which has to be maintained during the whole lifecycle
• Greg Luck’s WebLog: RESTful, resource-oriented caching now available in ehcache-server – I have just released ehcache-server-0.3, which includes a fully functional RESTful, resource-oriented implementation. The standalone-server has also been updated to 0.3.
• Coding Horror: Quantity Always Trumps Quality – When it comes to software, the same rule applies. If you aren't building, you aren't learning. Rather than agonizing over whether you're building the right thing, just build it. And if that one doesn't work, keep building until you get one that does.
• Alex Miller – Java 7 Prediction Update – I just realized due to a forum thread that it’s been about 7 months since I posted my Java 7 Predictions. So, it seems like a good time to update those predictions
• Neil Peart – Neil Peart’s Top 10-Plus Fills – One of the reasons Neil Peart is so popular with other drummers is his creativity and how he approaches his fills.
• Lightstreamer on Firefox 3 – In this video I will show the seamless behavior of the "engine migration mechanism". Then, I will increase the number of tabs concurrently displaying real-time data. I will stop at 10 tabs, due to the CPU consumption of the screen recording software.
• Toyota Announces Segway Killer: The Winglet Personal Transporter | Gadget Lab from Wired.com – Toyota has come up with a vertical, mechanized scooter or personal transporter, intended to help people move about in public areas. Called the Winglet because of its fleet nature, it is the first gadget to duplicate the navigation system of Segway
• Case Study: Performance Tuning a Web Shop (Part 1) | Architects Zone – We found the evidence by using tools, most importantly: JMeter for load testing, JAMon for performance monitoring and JARep for performance reporting. With JMeter we can simulate user behavior and put a realistic load on the system. The JMeter test should
• Raible Designs | [OSCON 2008] Web Frameworks of the Future: Flex, GWT, Grails and Rails – Below is the presentation I'm delivering at OSCON today. Unfortunately, I had to remove slides on GWT and Flex to fit w/in the 45 minute time limit.
• Linux News: Applications: With New Alfresco App, Enterprise Content Management Takes the OSS Road – Alfresco Software announced Thursday the availability of Alfresco Labs version 3, an open source alternative to Microsoft's enterprise content management
• SEC OKs websites and blogs for Reg. FD | IR Web Report – UNDER certain circumstances, companies can rely on their websites and blogs to meet the public disclosure requirements under Regulation FD, according to new guidance unanimously approved by the US Securities and Exchange Commission today
• zeromq: Fastest. Messaging. Ever. – Our mission with ØMQ ("ZeroMQ") is to build the fastest messaging ever. The way to get performance is to optimise the whole software and hardware stack together. So, we are developing ØMQ closely with major hardware firms
• iamdeepa on flex » Blog Archive » Where did the FlexBuilder Advanced Constraints UI go? – For Flex 3, the Advanced Constraints feature introduces the concept of ConstraintColumn and ConstraintRow objects that can be used to partition up absolute positioning containers. We broadened the constraint syntax to allow for controls to be constrained

Daily del.icio.us for July 27th through August 5th

• InfoQ: Does TDD Really Ensure Quality? – Our main result is that Test-First programmers write more tests per unit of programming effort. In turn, a higher number of tests lead to proportionally higher levels of productivity. Thus through a chain effect, Test-First appears to improve productivity
• InfoQ: “Can I call you back about that?” Building Asynchronous Services using Service Component Architecture – This article discusses the need for asynchronous services when you build an application using a service-oriented architecture. Building asynchronous services can get complicated, but is made straightforward using Service Component Architecture (SCA).
• InfoQ: Case Study: Applying Java Programming Skill to Flex – In an article published on Adobe Flex Developer Center, Bill Bejeck shares his experience creating components and enforcing separation of concerns with Flex, from a Java developer’s perspective.
• InfoQ: Kent Beck on Implementation Patterns – Kent Beck is interviewed about his new book, "Implementation patterns", the relationship between these patterns and XP, problems when adopting agile and the current status of design patterns.
• Enterprise Java Community: Introducing Apache Wicket – When you’re learning a new framework, it’s helpful to gain an understanding of the terms concepts, then move on to how the pieces come together. Wicket has a few core concepts to master, but once you understand them, you’ll find Wicket much more accessibl
• SpringSource Team Blog » Spring Overtakes EJB as a Skills Requirement – Job listings are a good indicator of the true adoption of technologies. Sometimes these trends can have dramatic implications. Indeed.com shows that in November, 2007, Spring overtook EJB as a skills requirement for Java job listings.
• InfoQ: Flex Load Testing Tool Available to Enterprise RIA application – As InfoQ reported (Forester report), RIA is proliferating in enterprise information workplaces. One of challenges faces a maturing development platform for developing mission critical systems is to produce quality, scalable and well tested applications.
• » Printable Design Patterns Quick Reference Cards – The Gang of Four design patterns have been elegantly distilled into a quick reference guide suitable for printing on 8.5 x 11.
• Merging and branching in Subversion 1.5 – Java World – Branching and merging are two inherently related functions that are due for a long-awaited upgrade in Subversion 1.5
• InfoQ: ExtJS Ecosystem Continues to Expand – New server-side tools are sprouting up around the ExtJS client-side Javascript framework. Community developed server-side support now exists for Java Enterprise Edition, Cold Fusion 8.0, Google Web Toolkit, and Ruby on Rails 2.0

Daily del.icio.us for January 29th

My brother was visiting this past weekend and so instead of us spending quality time together, I decided to upgrade my computer from Windows XP to Windows Vista. Here are some of my initial thoughts that I’ll try to break down in the good, the bad and the ugly. And boy there is still some ugliness that I hope Microsoft (and partners) solves soon. (Full disclosure – My brother works for Microsoft). Going back to my brother for a second, we are both true geeks at heart and so quality time for us is being locked up in my office with lots of coffee, 4 computers and 8 USB external drives humming away.

The install of Windows Vista RTM was on my new DELL dual-core 3.2 GHz PC with 2 GB of RAM and 256MB PCI Express ATI Radeon X600 video card. (Full specs on the hardware). Instead of choosing a clean and fresh install, I decided to opt for the ‘in place upgrade’ which replaces the Windows XP system/core files while retaining your existing applications, personal files and settings. I should also note that I installed the Ultimate version of Windows Vista.

The Good

There are a lot of really good things about Vista – The first and most striking difference between XP and Vista is Aero and the translucent effect of Aero Glass. Aero Glass is the eye-candy in Vista that fades in/out windows with smooth animation and does create a really nice visual effect. I’m sure the Mac OSX folks will jump in and say that OSX does this already and I think OSX does do this today and has done this for many years already. My brother is very impressed with the sidebar that allows you to drop in widgets or gadgets in Microsoft speak on your desktop. Having used Yahoo Widgets for a while now, this is nothing new to me and didn’t get me excited. I like the idea that Windows will now have a widget engine and this will hopefully allow people to create some interesting applications. I see a huge potential for this on the Enterprise side where a widget or gadget sitting on a user’s desktop could ping out and get the latest news, updates, prices, promotions, alerts, etc.

The other thing that’s worth mentioning is that installation process. With the exception of McAfee virus scan which I’ll describe in detail in the ‘bad’ section, the installation was very smooth. Once the install was off and running, it churned for about 80-90 minutes to get Vista installed and this included a couple of reboots.

I should also mention that the application that I really cared about worked just fine. It will probably take me days to make sure all or most of my applications are working correctly under Vista but the apps I use the most are Firefox, IntelliJ IDEA, FeedDemon, Putty, Java, WebLogic, Tomcat, Glassfish and UltraEdit and they all worked. The only app that I’ve had major problems with is iTunes and more on that later.

Another cool and I think innovate feature of Vista is the idea of ReadyBoost. ReadyBoost helps make your PCs more responsive by using flash memory devices (like USB thumb drives or CF/SD cards) to boost performance instead of swapping to disk. Hopefully new PC will start shipping with the new hybrid hard disks that have integrated flash memory to help improve performance, reliability, and battery-life in case of an laptop. The idea of using flash memory instead of swapping to disk is really cool and I hope other OS’s take this feature from Windows and implement it themselves.

The last item on the good-list is the Windows Media Center application. The Windows XP Media Center was slow and ugly but did the job and the new Media Center app is significantly faster than the old XP version and seems to perform a lot better. It’s still interesting to see how CPU intensive Media Center still is where the dual-core as at 70-80% utilization pretty much all the time while I am watching Live TV.

The Bad

While it’s only been about 2 days since I’ve had the RTM version of Vista on my computer, there are quite a few things I don’t like about Vista. I know Joel talked about the shutdown button and so I won’t bother with that but there are a lot of really annoying things about Vista. I know – A lot of you are probably shaking your heads thinking I’m probably one of those guys that doesn’t like change. Quite the contrary – I love change, but only if it’s for the better. For example, the latest version of Office will have the new ‘ribbon’ interface and I absolutely love that interface. It took me a couple of hours to feel comfortable with the ribbon and find the things that I actually needed to do but I commend Microsoft for taking this bold move and creating a really sensible and usable user interface. There are a lot of things that I wouldn’t have changed with Vista and maybe I’ll learn to love them with time but I just hate the new start menu. While it’s nice that I can search for ‘word’ to have it bring up Microsoft Word, I would like to be able to just see the menu and sort/arrange in a way that makes sense to me.

Another thing that I also completely hate is the new Windows Explorer and the Navigation Pane. What happened to My Documents and My Pictures and My Videos? I don’t know what genius made this decision but instead of storing user profile information under ‘C:\Documents and Settings\’, Microsoft decided to move that to C:\Users. Why the hell would you do that? What about applications that are using the ‘C:\Documents and Settings\’ structure and now that whole directory is gone and now applications that rely on that or use hard coded paths will certainly break. Case in point – iTunes. I have about 50 GB of music under iTunes with a majority of it being music that I’ve personally ripped as MP3 over the last many years and probably 300-400 songs that I’ve purchased from iTunes. I had all my music under ‘C:\Documents and settings\login\My Documents\My Music’ and so the iTunes database had that path internally. Hopefully applications would use the registry and so the soft reference to ‘My Music’ would travel to the new location but apparently iTunes doesn’t do that and all of my purchased music wouldn’t play. So I reauthorized my computer and it still wouldn’t work. I’ve been playing with it for a couple of hours and I’ve made the problem worse as I’ve managed to create 2 copies of every song in my library. Thank god for backups.

The Ugly

I guess I am careful when it comes to my computer and so I have the McAfee suite of products and I typically only use the VirusScan and Firewall features of the suite. But the Vista installer wouldn’t run till I uninstalled McAfee. Now I’ve been reading a lot of new kernel security in Vista and the new PatchGuard technology built into 64-bit Vista that will not allow any third-party tool from making Windows API calls in order to modify their behavior or do something malicious. So I had to uninstall McAfee to even install Vista and that doesn’t give me a good feeling. I don’t like running with a memory resident virus scan program running at all times – Having a good virus scan gives me the license to download any piece of crap I see on the Internet and installing it. The installer didn’t give me any help by pointing out a list of other supported virus scan programs that are approved to work with Vista. After the install, I was able to go to McAfee’s site and download a new version of the software that worked under Vista.

I have a major problem with the idea of User Account Control and the false sense of security people are going to get from consenting to actions that require additional access. In the first two hours, I had 15 of these popup asking me things like can the firewall run and block something and unblock something. I paid attention for a while but then was tempted to turn off the feature or just click ok. So how is someone like my dad who loves his computer he is not computer savvy enough to understand the question he is being asked or the function he is consenting to by clicking ok. I know this is a tough problem to solve instead of just locking out the user while allowing them to install software, control the computer but other OS’s have this figured out.

The last item that fell in the ugly-section was Vista Office. After Vista was installed and working. I decided to install the latest version of Office. Much to my disappointment, the Office installer was not able to upgrade my copy of Office 2003 because of some file permission issue. I re-ran the installer a few times to no avail – I know uninstall/reinstall is cleaner and better than upgrade but upgrade should work and I could not get Office to install of my Vista PC. Go figure.

In conclusion, Vista does have quite a few compelling features that will make this a required upgrade for pretty much everyone. But I wonder if Microsoft would have been better by taking the BSD or Linux core and adding their UI on top of a working UNIX kernel? Mac’s have certainly gotten that to work and Microsoft could have done that instead of writing the whole OS from scratch or borrowing some of the XP code, which came from Windows 2000, which probably came from NT which probably came from Dave Culter and Digital. Yikes

Microsoft Vista: The Good, Bad and Ugly