Palm's WebOS SDK (Mojo)

Finally, I got the email to download the SDK this evening at 11:19 pm! I will give it a try soon...

CodeCamp @ UCSD (27-28 June 2009)

We had a very good CodeCamp @ UCSD. I talked about Software Design Patterns and Objective-C for iPhone development in two consecutive sessions. Attendance was pretty good, I will post my presentations here soon...

SD BarCamp (30-31 May 2009)

SD Barcamp 5 started @ Intuit today. Very cool sessions :)

SoCal Code Camp Announced

I got an email from my friend Woody Pewitt from Microsoft today. Yes, it is that time again :) We will have our next code camp at UCSD (27 and 28 June 2009).

Come and join us. It is fun, very informative and extremely useful for all of us...

Here is the link: http://www.socalcodecamp.com

Sun's Future (21 April 2009/Tue)

OK, Sun & IBM deal didn't go through, as we all know. Now this week, we have a new offer for Sun, this time from Oracle! Many expressed their concerns about the future of the Sun's technologies. What will happen to Java? How about MySQL? Same questions apply to the others as well, such as Netbeans, OpenOffice, Virtual Box?

Personally, I would like to see Sun standing still on its own feet and continue its wonderful contributions to the technology world. However, company's financial trouble is suggesting the otherwise. We will see what would happen to this deal in a few short days. Is it going to go through or will it fall off like the IBM deal? Again, another interesting development in the tech arena to observe...

I was also thinking today, what if IBM increases its bid for Sun? Think about the other extereme case: Wouldn't it be also funny to see Microsoft jumping in and offering yet another bid for our beloved Sun :)

Well, today is our San Diego Java User Group meeting at Sun, and I bet many of us will be talking about these issues at the meeting all evening long :)

Cloud Computing

In the near future, our data and programs will be floating somewhere in the connected servers known as the Cloud. All of the computation will be done within there, and the processed results will be stored in there as well. The main idea is to incorporate software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS). This is the big promise of the so-called "Cloud Computing". As a matter of fact the concept is a reality today in the form of proprietary implementations, thanks to the pioneers in this field. The concept has been considered as the first major IT market disruption that has taken place since the open software movement.

There are quite a few big players out there: Amazon, Google, Sun, IBM, and Microsoft. New players are joining to the game day by day. Now there is even a manifesto (Open Cloud Manifesto) circulating around the techno corners: Promoting openness! Isn't it too early for a manifesto in this area? I don't know. Manifesto, standards, many companies who are willing to jump on the bandwagon, these are all good, however it may hinder the innovation in this early stage! Maybe for this type of reasons and also to protect their initial investments, some of the big companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft didn't say yes to the open cloud yet! On the other side, the impressive list of supporters (such as IBM, Aptana, SAP, EMC, VMWare, GoGrid, Red Hat, Novell, OMG etc.) of the movement is groving fast.

Is the cloud computing a big hype as some will argue, or a revolutionary new computing platform for all of us? We will see the results soon :)

Windows 7 == Vista 2.0 ?

I just downloaded the Windows 7 test version (build 7000) today and quicly set up a virtual machine using VMware Fusion for it. Installation went smoothly (business edition installed). Once I installed the VMware tools, I was ready to go and give it a try. I am using my MacBook (w/4GB RAM) and I allocated 1GB RAM for Win7. Later I shutdown the system and restarted again just to see how long it would take to reboot, it took 50 seconds to restart, little better than Vista VM.

On the surface, it looks almost like Vista! Minor differences on the taskbar, but start button and panel are exactly the same. Documents, Pictures, Music, Computer, Control Panel, etc all have the same icons like Vista. In the start panel I noticed Snipping Tool for capturing the screen image. I also did take a look at the Math Intput Panel (under Tablet PC) and Windows PowerShell.

By default, .NET installed of course (that's good). No flash or Java there, one needs to install them seperately. Flash installation was a breeze, I didn't install any JRE yet. I will check the security enhancements soon.

Task manager: Memory section now shows total, cached, available and free memory in the system. This is a good change since in Vista we could only see total, cached and free memory! That gives the wrong impression because Vista tries to cache as many system resources as possible, and one can see that there is no free memory left! This is a misnomer, in fact, Vista will release the memory and replace it with new content as needed.

Still, there is no built-in virtual desktop support (although many applications available freely)! I was hoping for a cool looking virtual desktop app from MS in this release!

OK, here is the screenshot of the desktop:

CES Starting

World's largest consumer technology trade show "International Consumer Electronics Show" is starting this week in Las Vegas (8-11 January 2009). Even in recession times that we go through right now, the show would be very interesting to see. Probably, a lot of start-ups will show their innovative technologies in the event. I am eager to see which products, tools, would be the big winners this year...

San Diego BarCamp (15-16 November 2008)

San Diego BarCamp will be at Intuit's campus this time. A lot of cool sessions! Just be there if you can:) The event is free however you need to register.

http://www.barcampsd.org

Address:
7545 Torrey Santa Fe Rd
San Diego, CA 92129

Map: Intuit's Campus

Barack is the President (4 November 2008/Tue)

This is a historic victory in America, and I am delighted to be a part of it.

Rich Internet Apps

So far, there are four major technologies for the RIA.

1. Flash | Flex from Adobe
2. Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)
3. Silverlight from Microsoft
4. JavaFX from Sun

Flash is around for many years and clearly the most powerful one, specifically with the Flex, developer friendly RIA development environment build on top of Eclipse platform.
Ajax is very strong and popular and many sites use the technology. On the other side, Microsoft entered the arena with their Silverlight technology. Supported in Windows and Mac only at this point, however, Linux corresponding Moonlight project allows to run Silverlight apps.

And finally, Sun's JavaFX showed up last year, still in development, but very promising.

Let's see what will happen in the near future...

iPhones

Yesterday, my wife and I got our new 3G iPhones. So far so good, we are both enjoying our new gadgets :)

Here is the list of the little apps that I have installed so far (all free form iTunes App Store):
* Pocket Express: Personalized information service
* VNC: Provides access to a VNC server (works well)
* Pangea VR: Utility to view interactive VR panoramas.
* LastFM: Free streaming radio to listen your favorite music.
* Shazam: Music identification (works amazingly well!)
* Eventful: Shows local events
* vSnax: Videos for latest news and more
* Shakespeare: Complete works of William.
* Box Office: Read movie reviews, locate theaters and show times
* Bubbles: Just a little fun game
* PearMe: Find matching photos (game)

Introduction to Design Patterns (CodeCamp Presentation)

As promised, here is the presentation that I used in my session today at CodeCamp at UCSD...

Bye Bye Bill (26 June 2008/Thr)

Bill Gates is officially ending his full-time tenure at Microsoft this week. He will be dedicating most of his time to his charitable foundation (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation).

Good luck Bill. Thanks for the contributions you have made to the computing industry through out all these years. We will miss you.

Here is the Bill's last day at Microsoft.

SoCal Codecamp (28-29 June 2008)

OK, it's almost that time again for SoCal Codecamp, and it is approaching fast. It will start this weekend at UCSD.

Here is the info:
URL: http://www.socalcodecamp.com

Address:
UCSD Extension Complex (Google map)
9600 N. Torrey Pines Rd.
La Jolla, CA 92037

iARoC Robot Contest (21-22 June 2008)

International Autonomous Robot Contest (iARoC) started in San Diego (Del Mar Fairgrounds). We started to view teams' presentations yesterday, and today the actual competition will take place...

Good luck everyone...

BarCamp San Diego 2008

BarCamp is starting today at Microsoft offices at UTC area.

URL: http://www.barcamp.org/BarCampSanDiego

Address:
Microsoft
9255 Towne Centre Dr # 400
San Diego, CA

Google Map

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron)

Ubuntu Hardy Heron has just released today (following Feisty Fawn and Gutsy Gibbon releases of 2007), and yes, many servers are extremely overloaded as expected! I am downloading now, but looks like it will take 6 or 7 hours!

MacBook 2008

Last week, I got my third Apple computer. First one that I have was the Mac Mini (got it in 2005, and now it is used by my four-year-old son). This new machine comes with 2GB RAM, 250 GB HDD and Intel Core-Duo 2.4 GHz CPU. I am quite delighted with it's performance. Even running with 6 virtual desktops through Leopard's spaces, and 2 virtual machines (Vista and Ubuntu) at the same time, it performed amazingly well. I was so surprised to see the action. Of course, the cool thing about this, I can run all the greatest operating systems in one machine...

By the way, I set up synergy to use my main keyboard and mouse with my MacBook when I am in the office. I would highly recommend it if you have multiple machines and monitors around you :)

PS: I am using VMware's Fusion and Sun's VirtualBox for virtualization. Fusion really provides near-native performance, and things work smoothly. I tried Parallels desktop virtualization before, although not in my new MacBook but on Vista. Based on that experience, I believe VMware performs better.

UCSD Supercomputer Center & Calit2 Visit (2 April 2008/Wed)

In the second day of the ICSTC, we went to visit UCSD Supercomputer center and Calit2 (California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology).
Yes, we have seen some cool things including scientific visualization...

My first visit to the supercomputer center was in 2001. This time I was able to get some pictures :)