Having a Google account is sometimes useful in ways you hadn’t planned for. For example, at a few different employers I’ve been at, I’ve had to prepare for reviews by providing a list of accomplishments to my supervisor. One decent tool for generating this list is email, though it can take some time. Another useful tool is the Web History feature of your Google account.

Though this isn’t necessarily indicative of everything I’ve accomplished in the first half of 2008 per se, it’s definitely indicative of the types of things I’ve generally been into so far this year, and it’s interesting to look back. What does your Web History say?

• Gearman - this is used by some rather large web sites, notably Digg. It reminds me a little of having Torque and Maui, but geared toward more general-purpose applications. In fact, it was never clear to me that …

It's been a while since the last post. This is mostly due to me entering new territory in several ways. For one, I have been digging into JavaME development lately (platform change #1), building a mobile data entry and manipulation application that uses a an embedded database and talks to its server via Webservices, if connected. Otherwise data will be queued up locally and sent as soon as the

A coworker found out how secure Amazon's MP3 store is.  Even big guys like Amazon make errors in their web site security.
So, I clicked purchase and the album immediately started downloading. It was at this point that I had the thought cross my mind: "Did I update my credit card info?"

Well, no, I didn't. Before the album finished downloading, I was trying to change the method of payment. Turns out, for a digital purchase, you can't do such a thing. So, I waited and wondered was was going to come of this...

A buddy of mine just upgraded to an iPhone so he lent me his old iPod Touch to try out. I used it at the MySQL Conference along with my Palm Centro chick-phone to see if I could get away without dragging my laptop everywhere. And if I was successful, then I'd upgrade to an iPhone myself. I must admit, I was more impressed with hands-on use of the iPod Touch than I expected. It's small enough and light enough that you barely notice it in a jacket or pants pocket. And despite the small screen, the browsing experience via... READ MORE

One thing that still springs to mind when I think of the MySQL User Conference last week is Sun's opening keynote. While talking about Sun's market penetration with open source software, Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's CEO, slipped in a short mention of the mobile market saying something along the lines of "Sun is going to be entering the mobile market later on this year". He didn't spend more than 5 seconds talking about it, moving on to the acquisition of MySQL.

Last year, Sun already made an announcement of …

I read yesterday in The Wall Street Journal an interesting article in Personal Technology, “Solid-state drives challenge hard drives in speed, but not value”. While the title does sum up nothing new, the barrier to entry to embracing new technology is always cost, and early adopters may not have deeper pockets, but it’s also about being a alpha geek.

As the article states “Solid-state drives have some key advantages. Because that lack moving parts, they are faster, draw less power, and harder to damage and are quieter”. It also backed this up with some results.

What I did not realize, is the new MacBook Air has a 80GB HHD version at $1,799 and as 64G SSD version at $2,798. Testing showed that there was little difference in battery life between these models, however with the …

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A while back, I had talked about the issues I had with my
EVDO express card purchase and my macbook pro, a lot of you asked me to sum up my experiences with the card, and to comment on whether the speeds are worthy of being a primary connection or not, so here’s my answer.

Definitely, maybe.

I know, such definitive answers make me sound like a politician don’t they? Well.. politicians would probably skirt the question completely..
Here are my experiences with the Sprint USB card since late June 2007.

EVDO/3G data cards and plans are the most liberating technology ever sold. Seriously.

I am no longer confined to the house. I am no longer confined to starbucks and other places with stable wifi (Panera) (usually).
I can work, or play anywhere …

Apple announced, as expected, a release date for Mac OS 10.5 Leopard. The date is October 26th, 2007 in case you missed it. Since everyone on the internet is a guru, and therefore, so am I, I will give you plebes reasons to upgrade to Leopard. But, first let me qualify myself worthy of such preachery (gurus can make up words).

1. I’ve been using Leopard since January 2007, since I’m an ADC Member, and I have early access.
2. I’ve been using it on my primary work machine since September 2007.
3. This is the internet, and somehow you found this post to read, therefore you don’t know any better..

I’m going to assume that the build shipped to us ADC members, has been updated and will not be the build that will be released to the masses, there are still bugs in my release, but it’s leaps and bounds ahead of the August release, and very close to stable.

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