This dominant company is ahead of it's market because of three reasons, competitive pricing/marketing, support, and because they keep up with the latest trends of the communication. Dell are always looking at new ways to advertise or keep in touch with their potential customers by trendy communication methods.
The latest trend they're using is Twitter, a short message service that alerts you on what people and companies are doing. Dell has listed all their twitter accounts at http://www.dell.com/twitter for everyone to peruse.
Currently, only tech-savvy people use twitter (slowly growing out of this trend), but you will find that the majority of people who are ordering bulk lots of computers (5+) are the tech-savvy people. So to be able to target those users is definitely an asset to the point of view of Dell.
This is an issue I see every so often, particularly with calendar scripts or anything that works with dates and times. When you store your timestamp or date-time in a database and do a search between 2 values, most scripts leave out something very crucial.
Lets us the following data as an example.
Row | Start of Event | End of Event
---------------------------------------------------------
1 | 15/05/2008 12:00:00 | 15/05/2008 17:30:00
2 | 24/05/2008 09:00:00 | 24/05/2008 17:30:00
If we perform the following search, we will only get the first row (15/05/2008) and not the second row (24/05/2008).
WHERE `Start of Event` >= '15/05/2008'
AND `End of Event` < = '24/05/2008`
The reason is simple and most people won't realise this issue at first but will eventually find the issue once they have debugged their application to bits. When you perform a search between timestamps or date-time values using dates only, you are in fact doing a search between the dates and midnight as the default time value.
For example the above will in fact be searching for:
WHERE `Start of Event` >= '15/05/2008 00:00:00'
AND `End of Event` < = '24/05/2008 00:00:00`
Because the second event "24/05/2008 09:00:00" starts after the "24/05/2008 00:00:00" it won't be included in the results. It's a simple mistake and very easy one to make.
There are many ways to get around it, the most simple way is to get the last date eg; "24/05/2008" add one day, and minus one second. So you end up with "24/05/2008 23:59:59".
I was riding home on the train as I do every weekday from the city and came across something I thought interesting. A leaked document from the federal government reveals customs are planning to search everyone's iPods, media players, CD collections, and notebooks for pirated music/videos in any form.
If the process of going through customs wasn't long enough already, they are now going to search through our 'virtual' worlds to catch illegal music and videos. But, one thing that has me stumped? How will they know that it is illegal?
Digital rights management (DRM) has been thrown out the window and thus making your legal music collection look just like an illegal collection. I do believe that the law needs to catch up with modern-technology but this will just cause chaos at the customs.
In Europe, Virgin Media is already collecting statistics/data from Internet users who are illegally downloading music through their Internet Service Provider (ISP) and writing to them to warn them about their actions. Australia will probably catch up to these standards soon, and so will America.
In a collaboration between Microsoft and Lynda.com, whether you're a developer or a designer you can get a head start on how to create Microsoft Silverlight applications.
By July next year we will start to see new domain name extensions on top of the 250 that already exist. Addresses such as .australia, .brisbane, .america, and .newyork will be available for people to register a domain name under.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) have also announced that the regulating body of the new domain names are undecided, whether it will be local government bodies or not is to question. If local governments had control over domain names, they could ensure that the domain 'actually' has significance to that local area.
Large companies such as eBay would also like to have their own domain extension so they could have domains like cars.ebay and storename.ebay. It will create an extremely large volume of work for ICANN to begin with so we will not see some extensions for quite some time, and ICANN have to treat each extension request individually to ensure it doesn't offend different countries and nationalities.
When the domain extensions become available, it will be a guarantee that names like accommodation.australia or cars.america will be the first to go to cyber squatters or anyone lucky enough to beat them.
Firefox is an incredibly flexible browser that has proven popular among many Internet users. Check out our collection of awesome tools you can add on to Firefox. If you're not, take a look at everything you're missing out on.
Communication
Stay in touch with patrons, students, coworkers, and the community with these add-ons.
Twitterbar: Tweet from your browser's address bar and share useful links using this add-on.
Webmail Notifier: Get notified about unread emails with this add-on.
Meebo: This add-on lets you put all of your buddy lists in one convenient place in your browser.
FoxLingo: This handy add-on will translate web pages and searches automatically.
Shareaholic: Using Shareaholic, you can easily share urls, twitters, bookmarks, and so much more.
Facebook Toolbar: Supercharge your library's Facebook experience with this ultraconvenient toolbar.
Digg This!: Digg stories from the right-click menu with this add-on.
StumbleUpon: Browse reviewed sites and share your favorites with this add-on.
ScribeFire: With this blog editing add-on, you can post without ever leaving Firefox.
TinyURL Creator: Create tiny URLs quick and easy using this add-on.
Email This!: Using this add-on, you'll save time by being able to send highlighted text and links straight from your browser.
WordLearner toolbar: Using this toolbar, you'll be able to improve your foreign language vocabulary.
Organization
Keep all of your browser work neat and clean with these add-ons that offer organization.
Colorful Tabs: This add-on will make every tab a different color so that you can distinguish between them more easily.
Open IT Online: Open your documents and images right in Firefox using this add-on.
PermaTabs: Using PermaTabs, you'll have tabs that automatically open every time you launch Firefox.
ReminderFox: Save your memory and sanity with this add-on that sends you date-based reminders and to-do list items.
Morning Coffee: With this add-on, you can open up pre-set web pages for each day of the week.
Vertigo: With Vertigo, you can get more screen size by putting tabs on the side.
AutoFill Forms: Use this add-on to have forms automatically filled in for you.
Research & Citation
Corral your notes, get help with answers, and more, all with these useful add-ons.
Clipmarks: Capture important bits from around the web using Clipmarks.
Google Notebook: Using Google Notebook, you can take notes right in your browser.
Fleck: Fleck allows you to add notes and comments on web pages for yourself and others.
Googlepedia: When you use Googlepedia, every time you search with Google, you'll see a relevant Wikipedia right alongside your results.
Taboo: If you keep lots of tabs open for reference later, use this add-on that allows you to save them elsewhere.
Endnote: Endnote allows you to easily download a citation from Firefox.
Copy Plain Text: Using this add-on, you can turn all web page text into plain unformatted text.
Yoono: Start a scrapbook of resources, or just see what others have discovered by using this add-on.
Screengrab: Save pages for archiving and sharing with this add-on that will save entire pages or portions of a page as images.
Answers: Get answers as fast as one click using this add-on.
Fireshot: Take snapshots of pages, annotate them, and save them in a number of different formats with this add-on.
Who is this Person?: Using this add-on, you can highlight any name on a web page and find their information on Wikipedia, LinkedIn, IMDB, and lots more.
Googlebar Lite: This search toolbar adds 12 different search types and more.
Supercharged Browsing
If you spend a lot of time using Firefox, you're sure to appreciate all that these add-ons have to offer.
FasterFox: Make your Firefox experience faster using this add-on.
Snap Shots for Firefox: Use this add-on to get a preview of any website when you hold your mouse over the link.
IE Tab: Embed Internet Explorer in your Firefox browser using this add-on.
iMacros for Firefox: With this add-on, you can record and replay repetitious work performed on Firefox.
FireGestures: Using FireGestures, you can customize mouse gestures to execute a variety of commands.
SessionSaver: Use Session Saver to make sure you never lose your previous tabs.
PDF Download: Open up PDF documents as HTML and save yourself some time using this add-on.
Faviconize Tab: This add-on reduces your tabs down to favicons so that more will fit.
Flashblock: Keep annoying Flash animations at bay with Flashblock.
BlueOrganizer: This add-on enhances the content of web pages by turning addresses into Google maps links, book reviews into Amazon Wish List entries, and lots of other functions.
Feed Sidebar: Stay on top of your feeds right in your browser using Feed Sidebar.
Snap Links: With Snap Links, you can draw a box around links you'd like to open.
Tab Scope: Using this add-on, you can hover over a tab for a preview of the web page.
Google Preview: See thumbnails of sites you're looking up in Google search.
DownThemAll!: This download manager and accelerator will supercharge your browsing experience.
Nuke Anything: Hide just about anything via right-click with Nuke Anything.
URL Fixer: If you're constantly making URL typos, check out this add-on that will fix them for you.
Privacy & Security
Save yourself from the evils of viruses, phishing, and other Internet maladies by using these add-ons.
NoScript: NoScript will help you prevent JavaScript and other executable content from running without your permission.
The Google AJAX Libraries API has been created to make AJAX applications that use popular frameworks such as Prototype, Script.aculo.us, jQuery, Dojo, and MooTools faster and easier for developers and the end users.
Whenever a user goes to a AJAX site, they would normally have to download one of the libraries listed above again, and again, and again for each AJAX site they go to. The same file, over, and over, and over again. What a waste of time and speed.
So Google have developed a service for developers to reference these popular AJAX libraries from the Google servers. They have each version of the libraries (incase you want to stick to an older version), and many other benefits such as:-
* Caching can be done correctly, and once, by us... and developers have to do nothing
* Gzip works
* We can serve minified versions
* The files are hosted by Google which has a distributed CDN at various points around the world, so the files are "close" to the user
* The servers are fast
* By using the same URLs, if a critical mass of applications use the Google infrastructure, when someone comes to your application the file may already be loaded!
* A subtle performance (and security) issue revolves around the headers that you send up and down. Since you are using a special domain (NOTE: not google.com!), no cookies or other verbose headers will be sent up, saving precious bytes.
It's a good idea as a web developer to try and learn one thing everyday (no matter how small or how big). These sites are a great start to keep an eye to learn something new from web design and coding hints/tips, to new industry features.
Group Managing Director for Telstra Enterprise and Government, David Thodey (Left) and Telstra Chief Technology Officer, Dr Hugh Bradlow projected as a hologram(Right).
Today, Telstra showed a presentation with one guy in Melbourne and another guy in Adelaide, both sharing the same stage by the use of holograms (as pictured above). This is very exciting to see this technology finally become live as it is the beginning of a new era in Technology, Business and Lifestyle.
It has the look and feel of being in the same room together. Dr Bradlow
How holograms can change the Internet is a never ending list, instead of meeting people one website pages, why not invite their hologram into your room? Brings new meaning to the term "chat room" when the rooms can be physical.
Attending meetings in 2 different countries, one hour apart will become seamless and part of everyday life. The system isn't commercially available yet, but as the speed of Internet increases it will only be a few more years until we start to see this technology.
For more information about the presentation, checkout Brisbane Times.
When Google introduced their Street View feature into Google Maps, I've always said it would be very cool to see a video for directions from one location to another. I've found this site where they've been able to achieve just that.
The first thing you're going to notice is that it's slow, even on the fast speed and also you may receive blurry images if you're like me (in Australia). However as you can 'tap' into the Google Maps via their API, you're able to view all their images and functionality in any means you wish to (without violating their terms and services of course).
A user has created a C++/OpenGL application to give you a game-like experience, where you're able to move back and forwards and move around via the mouse. View the You Tube movie below to see this application in action.
For those who want to make their own Google Maps Street View application, this link is a great starting point.
The saying I'm sure we've all heard, but how does this relate to Web Development? Well sometimes we've just got to give up that old treasure of ours, that old website, that old web application, that old Internet application, and especially if your business relies heavily on it. It can come at a cost to your company to upgrade however the long term return is well worth it.
Before you look at upgrading your website or application, you need to research your business and what benefits you can achieve out of new technology services. Before I continue on with this post, I would like to elaborate one thing "sometimes it's best to start over."
You can achieve a really magnificent result from your upgrade, but as most people will tell you, it's cheaper to simply buy brand new then to spend all the $'s on upgrading (especially these days). The same applies with technology, new programming features leaves older features depreciated, and normally time consuming compared to the latest.
Your upgrading and continuous work can only get you so far, but why not go for the full blow and get the latest technology, you'll get more power in less time.
On this note, I'm going to look further into Python and Ruby on Rails (for those who don't know what they are... go Google them).
Australia's biggest datacentre will be coming to Brisbane by Engineering giant Emerson and datacentre company Digital Sense who have signed a deal to build 'what they claim' is Australia's largest high-density datacentre. Totalling 10,000 square metres and drawing a maximum of 196 megawatts of power.
Named "Data Centre City", the datacentre will be built near Kenmore just outside Brisbane, with a maximum capacity of 6,500 watts per square metre. Digital Sense hopes the first parts of Data Centre City will come online late this year.
The company pair are also working on a smaller datacentre in Kenmore, totalling 1,600 square metres and drawing 2000 watts per square metre, which is scheduled for completion this July.
The demand for data centres is in high demand across the world with more and more hosting companies forming, and more people looking at Internet solutions for their business. These new data centres will open Brisbane's perspective further in the IT and Internet industry. Putting Brisbane on the global Internet map, soon to be capital.
Adobe has gone one step further with Flash already in their beta release of version 10. There's a lot of integrations that have been inserted which make Flash a very impressive platform.
The is a huge battle between Microsoft (Silverlight), Adobe (AIR, Flex, and Flash), JavaScript, and Ruby on Rails for developers to choose as their platform. Adobe has definitely positioned itself back up on the podium with it's newest features.
Flash now has native support for 3D which enables developers to make 3D effects on 2D objects. The screenshot below shows 2D mobile phone images that have been placed in a circle, tilted and told to rotate.
There is also the features of the Pixel Bender which enables you to perform image processing effects and filters. Check out some of the photos in the Pixel Bender Gallery to see what Pixel Bender is capable of. It's like having Photoshop image effects right in Photoshop.
I encourage you to check out Adobe Labs about Flash 10 for further details on the next version of Flash 10.
Australia's biggest datacentre will be coming to Brisbane by Engineering giant Emerson and datacentre company Digital Sense who have signed a deal to build 'what they claim' is Australia's largest high-density datacentre. Totalling 10,000 square metres and drawing a maximum of 196 megawatts of power.
