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After the travesty of finally learning floats and postion…

April 13, 2009 // by admin

So i spent the last 2 quarters learning how to tweek layouts and dealing ie6/mozilla differences. Thank god for css3.

“The CSS Working Group had a face-to-face meeting in Tokyo last month and made a series of resolutions (which can be found on their blog). Most are fine technical points, but one of the more interesting is that the multi-column layout module is about to be reissued as a ‘last call’ document; after this, the module will be released as a candidate recommendation, meaning the authors are satisfied that the standard does what is needed of it, and will call for implementation.”

Exciting news for Gamers-New Radeon HD 4890 reviewed

April 13, 2009 // by admin

PCStats.com has posted a review of the ASUS EAH4890 HTDI/1GD5/A Radeon HD 4890 Videocard.

They wrote: “As you might have guessed, ATI’s new Radeon HD 4890 videocard is well placed to compete with enthusiast videocards like the Radeon HD 4870 1GB and Geforce GTS 260 Core 216, as well as the recently released nVidia Geforce GTX 275. In terms of performance, the Radeon HD 4890 has the potential to beat all of the above, with its most direct competition coming from the more-expensive Geforce GTX 285 videocard. These are the fastest single-GPU videocards available on the market today, and are all more than powerful to handle gaming on anything less than a 30″-wide LCD display at resolutions of 2560 x 1600. For smooth gaming at extreme resolutions like that, a multi-GPU setup is still the best option.”

Read the rest of the article here.

Obama To Start Web Conferencing With His Constituents

March 26, 2009 // by admin

The New York Times reporter, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, wrote on The Caucus,

“President Obama is trying to talk directly to the American people these days, making the case for his ambitious agenda in forums as varied as Jay Leno’s late-night television show and a news conference on Tuesday. Now Mr. Obama will have a chance at even more direct engagement, in what the White House is billing as the first Internet video news conference by an American president.”

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Obama is sending an unspoken message to America. He has utilized the internet more then any other President before him. He is pushing for change in how our countries leaders will communicate to their constituents for the next millennium.

During the Obama inauguration, Scott Guthrie on his blog, wrote of how Silverlight was used on the Inauguration Site, www.pic2009.org.

Claire Cain Miller, a New York Times reporter, also wrote an article detailing Obama’s use of the internet during his campaign and how it will change the way of politics.

Surprise!!! Internet Explorer Get teh Hack

March 21, 2009 // by admin

Andrea James reported on blog.seattlepi.com:

“A 25-year-old German graduate student who goes only by Nils has hacked Internet Explorer 8, along with Safari and Firefox, at CanSecWest’s hacking competition.

CanSecWest is a security conference that is being held at the Sheraton Wall Centre hotel in downtown Vancouver, B.C.

Microsoft is one of 16 listed sponsors. The conference started Monday and ends today.

The hacking competition is just one portion of a larger conference, but it gets most of the attention. This year, the hackers set to crack the major Internet browsers and mobile devices such as the Blackberry, iPhone, G1 Android phone and other smart phones.

Nils exploited all three of the browsers within 30 minutes, a conference spokeswoman said.

“He hasn’t told everybody his last name. Everybody’s been trying to get contact information, and he wont give his last name,” conference spokeswoman Melissa Pelto said.

TippingPoint Technologies, a company that designs intrusion detection systems, offers $5,000 in cash for bugs that are reported.

Security expert Charlie Miller was the first person to crack one of the world’s major browsers, breaking into Apple Inc.’s Safari in under 30 seconds.

“It was pretty much over before I knew it had started,” Pelto said.

Attacks are prepared beforehand and executed during the competition. Nobody has tried to hack Google’s Chrome browser.

A browser hack is defined as “code execution within the context of the application.” — In other words, getting it to do something, Pelto said.

For the mobile hacking competition, the user needs to gain access to a machine, run an application and demonstrate a loss of information or user data, Pelto said.

So far, nobody has hacked the mobile devices. Each day, additional software is loaded onto the mobile devices to make them easier to exploit.

“It will be interesting to see what comes out today,” Pelto said.

Ars Technica has more on Charlie Miller, and his former hacks.”

RIA Updates 3-9-2009

March 13, 2009 // by admin

David Tucker Lists updates for RIA.

“This week the Flex SDK gets some bug fixes, iLog releases a new set of visualization components, the new version of jQuery UI was released, Microsoft provides some guidance on Silverlight development, and a talk on the future of Rich Internet Applications. All this and more on the Weekly RIA RoundUp from InsideRIA.”

Copyright in the New Age of the Internet

March 11, 2009 // by admin

Newsvine-Dr. Know

The copyright issue came to the front with Victor Hugo. In 1886 his International Association of Literary Artists addressed the issue. The Berne Convention was adopted by many countries (but not the United States). It simply stated that once any effort was ‘fixed’ (completed) the author automatically had all copyrights to the product. No claim had to be made to protect those rights. That continues to this day. Before the convention works were only protected in the country where it originated. There were many revisions of the Berne Convention. The only one that really matters is the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988. The United States adopted this March 1, 1989.

The convoluted copyright laws of the United States were greatly simplified by this act. It removes a lot of confusion about what constitutes a “copyright”

This destroys a lot of myths:

Myth 1) “It’s not copyrighted unless it has a clear copyright statement.”

This was partially true in the past. In the past copyrights could expire if not renewed. This is no longer the case. As it stands now almost everything created privately and originally in the United States after April 1, 1989 is copyrighted and protected whether it has a notice or not. The lack of a copyright notice does not absolve anyone from “accidentally” using the property. The addition of a copyright statement MAY increase the validity but is not necessary to prove ownership of those rights. The presence of the copyright statement will likely subject the usurper to stronger damage judgments. Pictures are easy subjects of copyright abuse.

Myth 2) “It came in email, it is not copyrighted”

The corollaries to this are that it was posted on some blog, social network site or any other internet source it is not copyrighted. This was NEVER TRUE. If you do not see a clear waiver of copyright by the author or creator of the work, assume it IS copyrighted.

In fact, every email you write is copyrighted. Every email you read is copyrighted. Every time you chose to add to an email and pass the whole thing on, you are violating the copyrights of any previous author of that email. (A pet peeve of the author)

Myth 3) “If I do not charge for it, I did not violate the copyright”

This is false on a couple of counts. First, you are never entitled to charge for the efforts of another. Second, you do not have the right to waive compensation due to the author or creator. The damages you do to the value of the work is your responsibility as well as anyone that also violates the rights of the owner because you said they could us the property.

Myth 4) “I am protected by ‘fair use’.”

The “Fair Use” doctrine allows a SMALL excerpt to be used. The excerpt MUST have an attribution to the original work. You may only excerpt the minimum amount for the purpose of your commentary. Facts and ideas CANNOT be copyrighted. The method of EXPRESSION are protected.

Myth 5) “Copyrights expire, once it has not been used for a while it is fair game.”

In the past this was true. It is no longer true. A copyrighted logo or phrase may fall into disuse but the copyright no longer expires automatically. The person holding the copyright has to formally relinquish those rights.

Photographs

Photography on the internet is a prime target of copyright abuse. Most people are aware that one cannot scan a picture from a magazine then publish it on the internet. Many people “pass along” funny pictures they have seen without a thought. In fact, this is a violation of the copyright. Noting that all emails ARE copyrighted, the inclusiont of non-copyrighted material in an email automatically adds a copyright again. If you use it in addition to any statement or opinion you have “created” a new work.

Another way for copyright to be violated. Someone finds a picture that is designated to be in the public domain. They import it into their photo editor. They add a funny saying as a caption. That new product is automatically copyrighted. Unless someone states that photos posted on a web site are in the public domain, they are not. The assumption must be that everything is copyrighted unless clearly stated otherwise by the person originating the work. “It is ok, my friend says it is ok” does not remove the copyrights evenj if your “friend” is the artist. IF he gave YOU permission, you cannot pass the right to use to another.

Improving Access to Government through Better Use of the Web: First Public Draft

March 10, 2009 // by admin

From W3.org:

2009-03-10: The eGovernment Interest Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Improving Access to Government through Better Use of the Web. The term “eGovernment” refers to the use of the Web or other information technologies by governing bodies (local, state, federal, multi-national) to interact with their citizenry, between departments and divisions, and between governments themselves. Recognizing that governments throughout the World need assistance and guidance in achieving the promises of electronic government through technology and the Web, this document seeks to define and call forth, but not yet solve, the variety of issues and challenges faced by governments. The use cases, documentation, and explanation are focused on the available or needed technical standards but additionally provide context to note and describe the additional challenges and issues which exist before success can be realized. This document has been published in time for W3C’s eGovernment stakeholder meeting in Washington, D.C.. Learn more about the eGovernment Activity. (Copyright © [3/10/2009] World Wide Web Consortium, (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics, Keio University). All Rights Reserved.)

My Top 10 Favorite Tech Blogs

March 2, 2009 // by admin

Everyone has a top 10 list so why should I be any different? =P

My list is not necessarily the top 10 best blogs but my favorites.

What is your top 10?

Making a Decision: Flex vs. Silverlight

March 1, 2009 // by admin

Researching the subject is difficult. Most users of either are rather biased one way or the other. My best suggestion is try them both out and decide for yourself. If you don’t like this method, I have included some of the information I have found so you may be able to ease the pain of endless google searches.

On the Flex side I found a very useful listing for pros from the Flex platform on the Silverlight forums:

Ted says:

“I can talk about the Flex side…

1. Flex is available today and works.

2. Flex 2 is viewable in 85+% of web browsers, Flex 2 SWF files run in Flash Player 9.

3. You can use any HTTP Server and any backend technology (.NET,JAVA,PHP,Ruby,CF, Python) with Flex via XML, SOAP, Sockets, ZLIB, Etc.

4. Flex 2 has a mature and growing component set. There are lots of developers creating open source components for Flex and the source code for all components is available today in the Flex SDK. See: Flexbox, FlexLib, FlexComponents for details.

5. Flex does not integrate well with .NET on the backend. We are working on a great solution to make .NET integration seamless. Additionally strongly typed SOAP Web Services support coming in Flex 3 (very soon) including full support for .NET SOAP encodings.

6. Real-time data push with Binary Sockets using any TCP/IP Socket server. FTP/NNTP/SVN/POP/XMPP Example: http://webmessenger.yahoo.com

7. Graphical and Programatic skinning with Illustrator/Flash/Photoshop/CSS

8. There are many large companies actively developing RIA’s with Flex, from JPMorgan/Chase to Yahoo to Google to many Web 2.0 start-ups.

9. If you develop using Flex or AJAX you can port your app to the desktop using Apollo. Apollo allows you to build desktop applications for WIN/LIN/OSX deployed as a single .AIR file cross-platform. One toolset for Web RIA and Desktop RIA development.

10. Flex has gone fully open source Mozilla Public License. All compilers and framework will be available for extension and embedding within the Flex 3 SDK.

Plus all the minor video advantages that SL1.0 has will evaporate in weeks.

It is an easy choice for me but I am pretty biased.”

Another Pro Flex author from Flex888.com add his 2 cents:

Charles wrote:

“While getting deeper into a Silverlight project, the frustration I’m feeling grows. Silverlight 2 indeed is a big leap forward comparing to version 1 in terms of development capabilities for ordinary developers. However, if you have decent enough experience working with Adobe Flex, Silverlight is still a very awkward product within the RIA development context. Hence, I believe it’s still behind Flex. I believe if Microsoft does it right, that lagging behind could be only in months, which will be a serious sooner-than-expected threat to Adobe and a huge benefit to RIA developers. But, I don’t believe the current Microsoft development culture supports my optimistic thinking on Silverlight. Therefore, the lagging behind will be in at least a year if not years.”

A good argument for Silverlight was written by Rockford Lhotka:

Lhotka writes:

“Arguably, Silverlight’s primary competitor is WPF. But I don’t think WPF is the long-term winner. Another obvious competitor is Flash/Flex/Air, and that could be serious except for the fact that Silverlight lets existing .NET developers (and there are a lot of us) leverage our existing skills, while Adobe means starting over. And another competitor is Gears, which may be valid, time will tell (as long as I don’t have to do Javascript), but also means starting over and discarding all the .NET skills we’ve accumulated. And Gears, to me, represents the last gasping attempt to salvage the web as we know it – and I suspect that’s a lost cause.”

“In short, I think Silverlight offers the power needed for smart client business apps, with the best deployment and navigation characteristics of the web. Sure, it needs to continue to grow and evolve (the search issue needs addressing for example), but I really think Silverlight represents the future of development for most of us.”

Chui’s Counterpoint offer’s another insight Pro Silverlight:

Chui writes:
”I would like to point out some technical reasons why I believe of all the RIAs that are going to be deployed, Silverlight stands in a good position to start carving off browser realestate from HTML.

Microsoft has learned to embrace the existing ecosystem. Silverlight, being text based, can be served by Apache and PHP.
In addition, Silverlight canbe embedded in existing HTML markup. This makes it extremely attractive for web designers and developers to incrementally deploy Silverlight applications. Look out for a Silverlight version of SIFR soon.
There is no separate compiler. Taking cues from the web browser, the absence of a separate compilation step means users are free to tinker, view source, and learn from other users. There’s going to be a lot of plagiarising, copying and adaptation of published Silverlight markup, and the ecosystem will flourish.
Silverlight content, being text-based, is indexable. For instance, this may mean that video streams can include subtitles based on Silverlight markup. Anything that helps search engines find your content is always welcome.
Silverlight offers a sane model of embedding and integrating Silverlight content (read “Widgets”) from other websites. Current approaches, such as using embedded javascript and iframes are really hacks, and lack a sane unified component model. Being vector based, these widgets will be able to fit into different page layouts. (Question: Is Silverlight still restricted by the outdated cross site remote access rules?)
The runtime is small enough that Microsoft is in a position to “push” out it’s plugin widely and by default. (Although I believe there’s a dependency on the .Net runtime, which is HUGE).”

In Conclusion

In my research, I have found that both methods are nice to have a hold on since neither has really jumped out and grabbed me. It seems if you are a Java guy you like Flex and if you are a .NET guy you like Silverlight. I hope this has helped. I also attached some other useful links to help you make your decision.

http://www.onflex.org/

http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/

http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/design-architecture/flex-silverlight-or-javafx-which-should-you-choose

http://tv.sys-con.com/node/385147

http://silverlight.net/

http://silverlight.net/blogs/jesseliberty/

http://insideria.com/index.htm

http://blog.topholt.com/2007/12/05/ria-wars-silverlight-vs-flex/

http://www.flex888.com/691/trend-check-on-flex-silverlight-and-javafx.html

Last Call: Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA); Best Practices and Implementation Guide Drafts Also Published

March 1, 2009 // by admin

From w3.org

The Protocols and Formats Working Group published the Last Call Working Draft of Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA). WAI-ARIA defines a way to make Web content and Web applications more accessible to people with disabilities. It especially helps with dynamic content and advanced user interface controls developed with Ajax, HTML, JavaScript, and related technologies.

The Working Group also published a First Public Working Draft of the WAI-ARIA User Agent Implementation Guide that provides guidance on how browsers and other user agents should expose WAI-ARIA features to platform accessibility APIs. The updated Working Draft of WAI-ARIA Best Practices that was published today describes how Web content developers can develop accessible rich Web applications using WAI-ARIA. These WAI-ARIA documents are described in the WAI-ARIA Overview. Read details in the review announcement, and about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). (Copyright © [2/24/2009] World Wide Web Consortium, (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics, Keio University). All Rights Reserved.)