Floppy disks are in again??? What??

Oh my...

Check it out.

Want to post some songs on your site?

I've got a new band, we've been putting some stuff together for the last few months. We recently started demoing a bit.

As we don't have a website yet, I don't really feel the need to post songs up yet.... and of course, we're just demoing.... (and yes, I do play music... drums)

I did come across this tool that could come in handy. It basically lets you convert MP3s or Wave files to .swf files, really compresses them down... which will help your potential listeners that may not have a super fast internet connection..

Check it out.
Aleo MP3 to SWF Converter 2.1

Microsoft's Silverlight to partially be open sourced

It seems on the heal of a big announcement by Adobe, that their Flex platform would be open sourced, Microsoft will somewhat follow suit.

It seems they will announce that Silverlight, their answer to Flash/Flex and Laszlo, will be at least partially open sourced.

The world of the rich internet applications, or Web 2.0, or whatever you would like to call it.. is growing more competitive.

Personally, I like Flex.... and I've played with Laszlo which I also do like.

We'll see how popular Silverlight becomes.
(Article here)


Check 'em all out!

Laszlo
Flex
Silverlight

India to offer free broadband

This is impressive...

Sometimes, I do wonder if half the stuff I read on the net is actually true... but, some of it is at least interesting.

India is set to offer 2MB internet free. I've heard such talk before from other places. I'm not sure how many have actually made steps in that direction.... but this is quite neat non the less...

(Article here)

Adobe to release Flex as OpenSource

This is really big news IMO...

Adobe has decided to release Flex as open source.

This is one tool that I'm quite interested in... I've attended many online presentations that are powered by flex and I must say, I've been impressed.

(Read it here)

Google calendars

Google was planning some significant downtime in Google Calendars for an upgrade... but it seems they've changed their minds on the downtime....

I have used Google Calendar a bit.... recently, I started using it a bit more, especially because of the shared calendar capabilities.

(David Berlind's ZDNet blog)

Mac Security - General Security

This is an interesting article....

A contest to find a bug in Mac OS X....

It's not just the Windows VS Mac on security... but the software that you use on your computer.

(Adrian Kingsley-Hughes)

The next ColdFusion 8

As the years pass, I've gotten to play with many different technologies. I've been put in positions to learn new things without necessarily studying.... just being given tasks and having to figure it out.

Over the years, I've worked with ColdFusion.... alot... and I really enjoy it.

I found this interesting blog post on the next version of ColdFusion. It highlights some key features like built in Ajax widgets, .NET integration, a flash based presentation builder and one that really surprised me.... I hadn't heard of this...

MS Exchange integration. This one might appeal to my boss. (Along with some other options of course)

Anyways, here is the post:
(ColdFusion 8 article)

Interesting article... back to 1984??

I thought this was a very interesting article....

With all the data mining going on in the world... seems like we're living in that classic novel.

Are we, or aren't we???

You decide.

(ZDNET Blog)

Upgrading to Vista?

Like many people, I love new stuff. Like way back on christmas morning (when I was a kid..... serious) I'd be so happy to open my junk....

Anyways... Vista.

It's been around for a little bit now.

I've heard some good things.... I've heard all the promo hoopla, and I'm never really swayed by that stuff.

But, I've heard some bad.

I've also seen some general weirdness.

I have not upgraded my work laptop to Vista. I'm quite happy running XP Pro, with 2 Gig of RAM and my software like Eclipse, MySQL tools, Outlook....etc.

I've seen a couple of computers literally crawl after upgrades and have some weird bugs... my boss had a strange bug with MS Office 2007..... he got it taken care of with the help of Microsoft support on the phone (which means they do score a few points).

Recently, I also worked a little on a brand new dell laptop, only had 1 Gig of RAM and came with a fresh new install of Vista. This thing is just plain bogged down. When this person would run just a few things, the laptops RAM shoots up to about 760 MB of usage (and up!!).

I got it to run at about 500MB, but it wasn't running anything. As soon as she uses Outlook for her email and a couple of other programs.... it's just painfully slow.

I would not bother thinking about Vista with any less than 2 Gigs of RAM. And at that, if I was to compare it with my work laptop that currently has 2 Gigs of RAM, to get the same performance as this one with Vista, I would get at least 3 Gigs of RAM. 4 preferably.

Plus, I'd rather see other people go through the pains of the first releases and make sure some bugs are worked out.... because I don't have time to fight with this thing.....

Also, care to "test drive" Vista??

Then go here:
http://windowsvistatestdrive.com/

Over/.

First post back: iPhone... not exactly new

I haven't posted on this blog in an eternity.

So recently, I decided that I would try to start publishing some general thoughts on new, current, upcoming technologies.

One thing that I found was kind of interesting..... Apple's new "iPhone" for instance... Apple now have an army of products (or at least it seems like it) that have that distinct "i-something" kind of ring...

Well... it seems the "iPhone" was around back in 1995-96.

Check it out!