Dreaming in Browser Swamp
Tuesday, September 19th, 2006A funny-but-pointed ramble about Javascript, browser incompatibility, and the future of programming.
Archive for September, 2006
A funny-but-pointed ramble about Javascript, browser incompatibility, and the future of programming.
Taking Intellisense to the Next Level
Monday, September 18th, 2006SystemOne is a --- well, I'm not sure, really. A wiki? A personal information manager? But watch in this screencast as it dynamically updates search results as you add text to the page. This is very cool... ...and it makes me wonder whether we should re-think how we define the curriculum ...
A Social Networking Company with a Believable Business Model
Monday, September 18th, 2006The idea behind FriendsForFamilies is obvious in retrospect: use the technology of online dating to help families find other families with similar interests. Just moved to a new city? Build a profile, then let their software find people who also like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, competitive swimming, and homemade pizza. ...
PyGTA Meeting Sept 19
Friday, September 15th, 2006The GTA's Python User Group's next meeting is Tuesday, Sept. 19. This time around, there'll be a pre-arranged speaker: Aaron Bentley (of Bazaar-NG fame) will be presenting a talk about the Sass web application wiki. The meeting is at the regular time (6:30pm) on the Third Tuesday of the Month (September ...
Audio Reminder App Demo & Discussion
Friday, September 15th, 2006The first TorCHI meeting of the academic year will be on Thursday, Sept 28, in Bahen 1230. Khai Truong, a new professor in our department, will be talking about an audio-based reminder application. For details, see the upcoming.org announcement. I think this is a good chance for DemoCampers and other ...
CASCON Workshops
Thursday, September 14th, 2006CAS is IBM's Centre for Advanced Studies; CASCON is an annual gathering of Canadian computer scientists and others that it organizes. Attendance is free, and there are some very interesting workshops this year. Here are a few highlights: Monday Oct 16 Agile for All: Supporting the Human Element in Agile Development AJAX (morning: ...
Not an Oxymoron
Thursday, September 14th, 2006Susan Baxter and others at the National Center for Genome Resources in the US have just published an article titled "Scientific Software Development Is Not An Oxymoron" in PLoS Computational Biology. It makes many of the same points as the Software Carpentry course, and includes pointers to examples of bioinformatics ...
Step N: Deliverables
Thursday, September 14th, 2006Let's skip ahead to the last step: wrapping up. For most students, and most assignments, this means handing the work in and getting a grade. But course projects are different: They often roll forward from one term to the next, so the end of one team's involvement isn't necessarily ...
Step 4: Respect
Thursday, September 7th, 2006(Note: updates are at the bottom of the article.) Nine years ago, when I first started writing for Doctor Dobb's Journal, I decided to do a piece on the object-oriented features that were being added to MATLAB 5. I didn't know much about them, so I called The MathWorks, told ...
Superficially Plausible Business Plan #31
Thursday, September 7th, 2006I paid a visit to the NanoHub at Purdue University yesterday, and in the discussion afterward, came up with what I think is an interesting value-add for application service providers. Suppose you're hosting programs for other people to use --- in NanoHub's case, a bunch of nanotechnology simulation and visualization ...