tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62427849041516259122012-01-21T10:31:49.093-05:00Thoughts about random things on the Web regarding Life, Software Development, Video Games, Photography, and Raising Kids....Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.comBlogger451100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-2705419826838983322009-02-22T14:44:00.000-05:002009-02-25T23:39:47.551-05:00

One of the projects I'm currently working on is a re-design of an existing Web Application. The original platform that was used to build the original web application is no longer being supported. So the client had no choice, they must move to more modern architecture. We have chosen Java/Tomcat/Spring/Hibernate. Since the old application has been around for many years, we're running into

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-43142004847133954902008-12-20T22:53:00.000-05:002009-02-25T23:40:38.474-05:00

This week, I was asked to introduce a co-worker to some of the main Programming concepts behind Java Web Applications. This person was very familiar with DotNet, but had not touched Java in many years.Like most programmers, he didn't want to read books...he wanted to get his hands on sample code as quickly as possible.Rather than downloading the official Java EE Servers and exploring their

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-56579563790772287052008-10-01T21:32:00.000-04:002008-10-01T21:35:40.010-04:00

I think Allstate Insurance is on the right track. "Could playing computer games enhance mental agility enough to turn people over 50 into better drivers? Allstate Corp. wants to find out, and if the answer is yes, it might offer insurance discounts to people who play the games.""Under a new pilot program called InSight, Allstate will offer specialized computer games to 100,000 customers in

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-6264937805783991502008-09-30T21:35:00.000-04:002008-10-01T21:37:26.941-04:00

Am I the only person having this problem? The "N" key on the keyboard to my MacBook Pro is chipped again. I may type a lot, but I've owned countless keyboards and never had to replace keys due to regular usage.Something's wrong with the material used to make keys on the MacBook Pro.

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-20836704077507342942008-09-10T08:20:00.001-04:002008-09-10T08:39:42.499-04:00

Yesterday, I had a meeting with a marketing company that was looking for fresh ideas for their Web Campaigns. During our conversation, we talked about the best way to explain a concept to one of their clients. Eventually, we all agreed that whatever it was, it had to be simple and non-technical. "Stick Figures" was suggested. And that reminded me of these great videos I came across a few

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-44658485743235647572008-08-19T23:28:00.000-04:002008-08-19T23:52:10.782-04:00

....It's so good, that apparently Starbucks bought the company that makes it in order to prevent other people from having it!Google's Motto - "Don't be evil"Starbuck's Motto - "Burn Coffee, Make Money"I first heard about the Clover coffee machine while reading a recent article out of Wired magazine (the ONLY print magazine worth subscribing too).What's a Clover Coffee machine? Glad you asked...

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-27638330492316915462008-07-28T10:25:00.001-04:002008-07-28T10:56:54.176-04:00

A new search engine which competes with Google was just launched by an Ex-Googler called Cuil. The main search entry screen works like Google Suggest, and presents a pop-up list of potential matches and hit-counts almost immediately. Search results are shown in a magazine-like format rather than a sparse list format....Curious, I thought I'd check it out and see what it says about me.Sure

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-20649479428368300512008-06-13T08:30:00.000-04:002008-06-13T09:21:04.143-04:00

Dilbert.Com lets people create their own punchlines to see if they are funnier than Scott Adams. Here's a comic I did this morning which sums up my limited options when working as a sub-contractor to one of the largest defense companies in the world.

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-80001813775012178902008-05-19T10:37:00.000-04:002008-05-19T10:43:31.910-04:00

Most USB devices work fine with my MacBook Pro and Parallels. And I can switch USB devices seamlessly between Mac OS X and Parallels. The only device that I've had trouble with is my TomTom 720 GPS. For some reason, this device always auto-disconnects in Vista under Parallels before I can do anything with the TomTom.Here's a trick to make it work though. Before launching your Parallels OS,

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-25860197389108070422008-05-16T11:03:00.001-04:002008-05-16T11:12:53.296-04:00

IBM is supporting an effort to used unused processing time from hundreds of thousands of computers to develop stronger and more nourishing strains of rice. This type of computing "...packs as much power as the third most-powerful supercomputer in the world..."Ram Samudrala, a 36-year-old PhD who leads a 30-member research team, says it would have taken them decades to complete their rice

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-9099395421268892052008-05-14T08:30:00.001-04:002008-05-14T09:02:10.091-04:00

In the past, I used Craigslist's free category to give away items. But many times, I'd have to sort through a lot of e-mail from people that don't live anywhere close to me...and they would need to drive from the other side of the city just to pick up the item. With the price of gas, that just didn't make any sense. People just weren't looking at the location before responding to pick up the

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-18415871399312302082008-05-14T00:05:00.000-04:002008-05-14T00:13:46.873-04:00

Last night while trying to fiddle with my Hotmail options, I noticed a new configuration titled "i'm making a difference". Curious, I clicked on it. It turns out that Microsoft is participating in a program which shares advertising revenue gained from e-mails with a charity of your choice! And its free to participate.So if you're a hotmail user, consider enabling that option and giving some

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-36779371947650720872008-05-13T09:59:00.001-04:002008-05-13T10:01:38.229-04:00

I stumbled on this article that shows that when Apple wins...Microsoft wins too!Microsoft's Mac unit is set to disclose on Tuesday that copies of the new Office for Mac 2008 are flying off the shelves at three times the rate of its predecessor. The company wouldn't disclose sales numbers, but said the sales are the highest in the 19-year history of the unit.

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-76184314390216177332008-05-07T22:18:00.000-04:002008-05-08T09:09:08.958-04:00

I was one of the biggest and most vocal fans of TIVO for many many years. Several friends bought TIVO after seeing demonstrations in my home. And I currently still have 3 active TIVO boxes (a lifetime Series 1, and two Series 2).But over the past year, TIVO began to do evil things to me....My problems started last year, when TIVO mysteriously increased the monthly billing rate for my Series 2

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-52575958448682881352008-04-29T08:50:00.000-04:002008-04-29T11:49:40.288-04:00

The "N" key on my MacBook Pro was wearing down prematurely. I have no idea why its only the "N" key...every other key on the keyboard is holding up just fine. I tried to contact Apple support through their website, but it directed me to the Apple Store in Tysons Corner instead.So yesterday on the way home from work, I decided to stop by the store and get it fixed.How good was my customer

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-69167464045866637562008-04-26T22:10:00.000-04:002008-04-26T22:24:26.397-04:00

In the WashingtonPost today, I stumbled on yet another article discussing the links between Video Games and Violence. The catalyst for this discussion was the upcoming release of Grand Theft Auto IV this week.As it turns out, there was a Harvard study on this topic (it was federally funded!). And the authors of that study have now published a book on their findings. (published April 15, 2008)

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-57195736794160187532008-04-11T08:42:00.000-04:002008-04-23T16:09:14.284-04:00

For those that didn't know, Maryland had enacted legislation to place a 6% Tech Tax on the following computer services:Computer facilities management and operation. Custom programming. Computer system planning and design that integrate computer hardware, software, and communication technologies. Computer disaster recovery. Data processing, storage and recovery. Hardware or software installation,

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-87484298647630301102008-04-11T00:27:00.001-04:002008-04-11T01:07:03.105-04:00

In a recent Reuters article, Stephen King (the horror writer) was criticizing a US State's plan to ban violent video games..."What makes me crazy is when politicians take it upon themselves to play surrogate parents. The results of that are usually disastrous. Not to mention undemocratic," wrote King.So can games cause violence? Or could games actually reduce violence? Some people are so sure

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-36030443685113041762008-04-09T23:21:00.000-04:002008-04-11T00:27:05.960-04:00

I recently ran into problems with Dawn of War on my MacBook Pro when Patch 140 was applied. The next time I launched Dawn of War after Patch 140 was applied, I was greeted with the following odd error:"Spooge driver not found. Verify that DirectX is properly installed."Chances are - you are fine, and there is no driver problem. If you Google the Net you'll see lots of people offering advice to

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-52747790172848620232007-07-20T17:28:00.001-04:002007-07-20T17:37:27.015-04:00

Parallels just released a new patch to their software which lets me run Windows Vista and Mac OS X simultaneously. I highly recommend that everybody using Parallels 3 Update to Parallels Build 4560 sooner rather than later.In the previous build of Parallels (4128) - Windows Vista would suck up 70-107% of my Mac's CPU even when Vista was idle! (I think CPU usage can go over 100% because I have a

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-76121627709827820782007-07-20T16:30:00.001-04:002007-07-20T17:24:02.387-04:00

The new project I just joined is waiting to get their source control system installed...so in the meantime -- I felt inclined to provide a interim solution until their permanent server arrives.I was able to get a local copy of CVS up and running on my MacBook Pro. Along the way - I learned a little more about the Mac Firewall and service configuration that I thought I'd share... (this stuff

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-65779562899928010152007-07-07T23:41:00.000-04:002007-07-08T16:21:29.872-04:00

The following articles helped me get my Samsung SYNC talking to my MacBookPro:Tether Your Smartphone To Your Mac, Ross Barkman's Home Page, and Tethering on the Samsung A707After buying my MacBook Pro with built-in Bluetooth - I couldn't wait to tether it to a cellular phone and get Internet connectivity anywhere I have cell-phone coverage. But first - I had to upgrade my old cell-phone, the

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-76710667966287229252007-07-06T15:54:00.000-04:002007-07-09T22:24:31.446-04:00

I was switching to a new client this month, so I decided to treat myself to a top-of-the-line 17" Apple MacBook Pro. I've seen a lot of co-workers at AOL walking around the building with the MBP and I was hit with Mac-envy.After a few days...Although I still love the machine, my first week did not go smoothly.My original goal was to install Oracle 10g, and eclipse to emulate the Unix development

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-46150240661697849202007-05-09T16:33:00.000-04:002007-05-09T17:10:11.346-04:00

A loooong time ago - I taught myself how to write software in the BASIC Programming language on a Radio Shack TRS-80 in middle-school. From there -- I moved up to an Apple II+ computer -- and still continued to write programs in BASIC. (and don't knock BASIC, back-in-the-day, Bill Gates started his Microsoft empire from the humble roots of the BASIC Programming language and DOS...but that's

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-79376298183568403522007-05-02T09:38:00.000-04:002007-05-02T12:38:43.967-04:00

This past year, I've spent a lot of time working with a wide variety of Rich Internet Technologies. In particular, Ajax (Dojo Toolkit, DWR, Prototype), and Ruby on Rails (yeah, I know, ROR is not specifically sold as a RIA platform, but it does incorporates Ajax seamlessly into the framework with partial templates, components, and readily available Prototype/Script.aolo.us support).Java Applets,

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-36691378846496478692007-03-22T16:05:00.000-04:002007-03-27T16:43:16.006-04:00

JSON: Making the "X" in Ajax Superfluous:The afternoon was off to a good start with Douglas Crockford presenting on JSON. Not much new ground was covered...In a nutshell, JSON is a better way to transfer data than XML. JSON is especially easy to use if you know that the client will be a browser (like it is with Ajax). Since JSON is a subset of JavaScript, the JavaScript engine processes JSON

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-84159051645998632712007-03-21T12:28:00.000-04:002007-03-22T16:40:12.666-04:00

I didn't start my Day 3 at Ajaxworld until 8:50am. There were 2 previous sessions: ASP.Net Ajax, and Kapow: Serving Mashups from the Long Tail of the Web. Fortunately - I had the opportunity to see ASP.Net Ajax in action at AOL back on March 1st from another Microsoft evangelist....which mean't I could sleep a little longer.For 8:50am - I attended Reginald Stadlbauer: Automatically Testing

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-57979594197197607152007-03-21T01:48:00.001-04:002007-03-21T01:52:02.785-04:00

For the 2:40pm - the only game in town is Laszlo System's presentation: The Browser, The Portal, and the Desktop. If you haven't tried it yet, visit the OpenLaszlo site to see application samples created with the OpenLaszlo platform. It's FREE and open-source. The coolest feature is its ability to generate a Flash (version 6, 7, 8) edition or an Ajax edition. Under the hood - Flex and

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-45951504788848161412007-03-21T01:03:00.000-04:002007-03-22T17:19:58.741-04:00

Since I'm interested in Dojo - I decide to attend James Harmon's talk "Creating AJAX-Powered Forms with the Dojo Toolkit". This was a bad choice for me because I didn't really learn anything new. But for those that have no exposure to the Dojo Toolkit - it would've been a really good session. His 50-minute presentation enhanced a typical JSP HTML form using Dojo elements that included

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-35123993396029432332007-03-20T15:29:00.000-04:002007-03-21T00:41:48.740-04:00

Day Two at AjaxWorld is off to a great start with a keynote presentation at 7:45am from Bret Taylor of Google: Scaling Ajax: The Promise and the Challenge of Modern Web Development. Bret Taylor was introduced as being the original developer of showcase Ajax web application Google Maps.He covered a wide range of Ajax topics including....How Ajax has changed the way we design User InterfacesHow

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-76887850130979525662007-03-19T16:09:00.000-04:002007-03-22T17:49:59.849-04:00

I'm here at AjaxWorld NYC which starts today (3/20/2007):SWAG review: I received a black bag which contained the following items....1 AjaxWorld DVD (2-discs - very nice)A couple vendor CDsIntelliJIdea - 30 day trialOracle Fusion MiddlewareFlex 2 SDK (which is free), Flex Builder 30-day trialunlabelled CD-RTurns out it has all the presentations - that's nice. Would be nice to label the CDSome

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-15551016595594318122007-03-19T06:08:00.001-04:002007-03-22T17:12:43.440-04:00

So I'm getting ready to attend AjaxWorld in New York City on March 19-21 -- and I realize that the conference is not 3 full-days....it's more like 1 half-day, and 2 painfully-long-days:Monday, 1:30pm - 5:30pmTuesday, 7:30am - 8pmWednesday, 7:30am - 7pmCheck out the schedule - it looks like there will be a lot of interesting topics....And I like Ajax a lot, but 13 hours on Day#2 is just asking too

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-20657596194946597272007-03-09T00:41:00.000-05:002007-03-18T00:45:07.357-04:00

I had to go to Bangalore, India to teach some classes on Ajax and Web 2.0 this week. So I started a separate travel Blog just about this trip.It should provide some interesting reading for any business travelers going to Bangalore for the first time. I hope you enjoy it!http://a-wong-turn.blogspot.com/

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-90597697228387603722007-03-04T21:53:00.000-05:002007-03-07T09:01:01.784-05:00

I started out my computing life with the Radio Shack TRS-80 and the Apple II+ computer. While simultaneously using PC clones in my jobs.By 1985 - I had moved from one Macintosh, to another...while simultaneously using PC clones and Sun workstations in my internships.Sadly - after entering the formal business world in the 1990s -- it became clear, that Macs weren't welcome at the office. So

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-53868620554679509272007-02-25T00:27:00.000-05:002007-03-05T19:45:44.722-05:00

I was fortunate enough to attend a class this week on Ruby on Rails from Chad Fowler. It really opened my eyes about why Ruby on Rails is getting so much buzz in the programming community.Many in the Java world are feeling less and less productive these days. I know I am. I've told people many times that as crazy as it sounds -- I was able to build useful apps much more quickly in old

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-27172686782678603412007-02-09T13:31:00.000-05:002007-02-09T13:35:25.310-05:00

Today's mission -- organize a list of resources about Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). So while collecting web links and resourcees...I stumbled on these two entertaining videos.The first one could viewed as SOA from a woman's point of view. It's key message "SOA is like clothing in your wardrobe". Hmmmmm -- never quite thought of it that way...but I guess she has a point.The next one

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-32926918437337429292007-02-07T11:10:00.000-05:002007-02-07T11:15:25.542-05:00

I was asked to organize a JavaScript brown-bag this month. While collecting material for my presentation, I came across this multi-part JavaScript posted by Yahoo. This is the best 2-hour presentation I've found on the subject of JavaScript. I couldn't do much better myself -- so instead of presenting - I've started to hand out this link instead.Part 1:Part 2:Part 3:Part 4:

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-51698878573934751272007-02-07T11:02:00.000-05:002007-02-07T11:15:49.750-05:00

If you do any type of web-development - you must try out FireBug...an outstanding JavaScript/DOM/CSS Debugging Plug-In for Firefox. Like most things I've tried -- I installed earlier versions without reading any manuals and found earlier versions to be very intuitive and helpful without any training. The latest release, FireBug 1.0, contains many new features that are more subtle. The best

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-69935655081673717422007-01-18T15:56:00.000-05:002007-01-18T17:30:47.322-05:00

I've been refreshing my skills with Hibernate and Spring lately, and one of the activities I took upon myself was to update the SpringBlog application provided in the book Pro Spring from Apress.Since the book was written in 2005, it is based on previous releases of Spring (v1.1) and Hibernate (v2.1). The current release of Spring is v2.02, and the current version of Hibernate is v3.2. (as of

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-35805806927776304142007-01-08T14:20:00.000-05:002007-01-08T22:02:07.487-05:00

Jeremiah Grossman of Whitehat Security published an article titled Myth-Busting AJAX (In)security. In this article, he posed two interesting questions (with answers)...Does AJAX cause a larger “Attack Surface”? No. Does AJAX make the “Attack Surface” harder to find? Yes and No. Technically, I agree. But Ajax does in fact change the nature of the Attack Surface. In a traditional dynamic

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-60991549160909079442007-01-05T09:18:00.000-05:002007-01-08T21:51:17.585-05:00

At the start of 2007, I thought I'd take a moment to look at Google statistics in Google Trends to review the search patterns for the term Java over the past year. There was concern at the beginning of 2006 that we were witnessing the end of the Java era. Based on the year-end graphs, it's not looking good for Java -- the pattern is showing a dramatic drop in early 2006 that has never

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-48862636290767899332006-12-27T16:34:00.000-05:002007-01-08T22:02:59.528-05:00

According to a index created by a company called TIOBE, Java is the #1 developer language.TIOBE Programmign Community IndexDecember 2006 results: PositionDec 2006PositionDec 2005Delta in PositionProgramming LanguageRatingsDec 2006DeltaDec 2005Status 1 1 Java 19.907% -2.36% A 2 2 C 16.616% -1.75% A 3 3 C++ 10.409% -0.39% A 4 5 (Visual) Basic 8.912% +1.33% A 5 4 PHP

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-292156517002323762006-12-27T16:11:00.000-05:002007-01-16T10:38:09.884-05:00

For Christmas this year -- my wife bought me Company of Heroes...I'm a big Warhammer fan - and loved Dawn of War -- Company of Heroes is a step-up from the same team that built Dawn of War. I can't wait to play it...But no matter how good Company of Heroes is...how much money can it make? I began to wonder how much money World of Warcraft would generate in 2006. After a quick search, I came

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-30637200191249102472006-12-22T09:54:00.000-05:002007-01-08T22:03:22.550-05:00

I finally decided what I wanted to by my parents for Christmas -- a Trutech Digital Photo Frame. But now I realize how hard it is to find those things (not nearly as hard as a Nintendo Wii or PS3 though).Through a random occurrance, a bunch of TruTech Digital Photo Frames were just put on the floor at a random Target I was shopping at. So I picked one up without doing any research. It turns

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com38tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6242784904151625912.post-51946776057299331182006-12-21T16:12:00.001-05:002007-01-08T21:52:43.607-05:00

Apparently, Google is no longer giving out new search keys to their Google Search API. http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/12/google_depreciates_SOAP_API.html My first thought was that they are retiring the SOAP API and substituting a simpler REST approach. My cohorts and I regularly have battles over the merits of REST vs. SOAP. But instead of providing a SOAP API like Yahoo Search, they're

Francis Wongnoreply@blogger.com0