Windows 7 First Impressions

Well I have played with Windows 7 for a few days now. Its very interesting. Kind of a cross between Mac OS X and Window XP. Since I have only limited experience with Vista I can't really make a comparison there.

The start menu defaults to a kind of history of apps you have executed. Any app icon can be pinned to the menu permanently. The All Programs option is now sort of a click thru instead of pop ups. When you select an option from the menu, it pops up in place instead of growing to the right. A big improvement in usability if you ask me.

The taskbar just shows the icon for an application, much like the doc for OS X.  There will allow you to put a lot more apps on there. Also a big improvement.

So far so good. I think I can definitely upgrade my XP systems with this OS.

iPhone Challenger? Meet Motorola Droid

A real challenger for the iPhone?  Maybe. Meet the Motorola Droid.

CNET Droid Review
Engadget Droid Review

Available from Verizon in early November for $199, this beauty sports a slide out keyboard and the Google Android 2.0 operating system. See the linked reviews for details on look and feel.

As an iPhone user this is one the first phones that tempts me to switch. Apple has a big lead at the moment in all things smart phone. But will it be able to keep it with a more open competitor? Things could get interesting.

Windows 7 Netbook

Want to try out a Windows 7 Netbook. Check out this beauty from HP. Notice that the LCD screen actually has a matte finish!  I picked one up today. More comments to come as I get a chance to play with it.

Windows 7 Released Today

Microsoft is releasing Windows 7 today. From all accounts a most excellent operating system. Haven't had a chance to use it myself, I'm I am looking forward to trying it out. Grats Microsoft!

Duct Tape Programmer

This is an old blog post, but new to me. Joel on Software wrote a post on Duct Tape Programming. A good read. I definitely agree that simpler is better.

JIndenter First Option of NetBeans 6.7.1 Project Menu?

I'm trying not to be angry as I write this post. But NetBeans developers why is JIndenter the first option when you right click the Project menu under the Files tab?

I was just finishing up a short project (i.e., example code) that will be seen by customers. I accidentally selected this option (my hand slipped), and the plugin proceeded to reformat all my code without a confirmation!  Not only did it add a comment spam to each of my source files, but since I had never configured the plugin, it messed up all my tabs.

Suggestions:

1. Before globally rewriting someone's code, display a confirmation.
2. Maybe an option like this should not be the first option on the menu? Just a thought.

Obviously I should have checked in a few times today and this would not be an issue. So it is really my fault. But really, this feature should be reconsidered. This happened on NetBeans 6.7.1 on OS X 10.5. Thanks for your consideration. :)

CodeIgniter Authentication

After reading up on CodeIgniter authentication, I wanted to link to a couple of resources that look to be

• First, David Winter has this nice short post on how to approach authentication with CodeIgniter. 
• Second, this StackOverflow discussion of CI auth libraries is also quite useful.

Growing Your Site

Pro Blogger has a link to a talk given by Digg's Kevin Rose in London. The talk is on how to grow your site to a million unique visitors.

Here were my take aways:

• Keep things simple. More features are not always a good thing. Often they are looking for what they can remove from their site.
• Build and release. Don't think you understand your users. Release new features, see how it works out with the users. Then iterate.

He also had some ideas about building community via Podcasting and parties and such. Not everyone is a Podcaster methinks. Also, it seems like the launch party thing is really only gonna work in Silicon Valley. Probably not a great help if you live in Northern Wyoming, for example.

In regard to other things Digg, I was listening to a 3 week old This Week in Tech pod cast. Kevin stated that with 40 million unique visitors a month Digg has reached the limits of MySQL. They are planning to move their back end to the open source Cassandra database.

I think that is a nice little factoid to know. Once you hit 20 or 30 million uniques, you may have to start weighing your database options.A nice problem to have. :)

MySQL Getting Started Guide

I actually posted a short MySQL guide a week or two ago, but haven't blogged about it.The Getting Started with MySQL page is a little cheat sheet to help me set up and administer a MySQL server and DB.

It certainly has helped with my CodeIgniter projects. It is not finished yet, but hopefully there is enough there to help others.

All Done - New Design Finished

The new design is all finished. I found that I had modified my blog template to the point where it essentially was the default Minima template. So I decided it would be best to install that base template and tweek things back to where I wanted.

Also, the old design was getting a little too boxy for me. This setup really dials that back.

Updating Template

I'm updating the template for my blog today. So things may look funky for a while. Will post again once I'm finished.

Yahoo Releases YUI 3

Yahoo has released version 3 of their YUI Ajax library. Check out write ups on Webware and the Yahoo blog post.

I haven't tried YUI yet. More a matter of time than anything else. But it looks like a good library.