Author Archive
What if a Hard Drive is Only a Cache?
When computers like the MacBook Air started coming equipped with solid state drives (SSDs), I thought the technology is cool, but it seemed like a drag to have to give up 50% or more of the storage capacity we’ve grown accustomed to in our hard drives. My laptop has 250GB of capacity. As of this [...]
IMS Learning Impact
Last week I was at IMS Learning Impact 2008 just up the road in Austin. The Sakai Foundation generously sponsored me to go, since I have been involved with Sakai’s support for IMS Common Cartridge for a couple of years. Michael Korcuska’s blog post about the event is here.
I have been guilty of moving exclusively [...]
The Winding Journey of Java DB
Java SE 6 has finally arrived on the Mac with a recent update, so I was over on Sun’s website reading about all the new stuff and Java DB caught my eye. This is a small, all-Java database that can be embedded in applications on a desktop, a server, or a mobile device. The reason [...]
The Business Value of SOA
Having heard about SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) for a long time without having any idea what it is, I was happy to discover this talk by Anne Thomas Manes which finally sheds light on the subject for me.
Key points for me:
SOA aims to tackle the problem of too much cost and redundancy in enterprise IT If [...]
Bollywood Blackboard!
Oh, this just makes my day.
Here’s a small series of humorous episodes related to recent Blackboard and Open Source Learning Management Systems. The mashups are made with snippets of classic Hindi Bollywood films, overlaid with user created subtitles, from a fun online tool called BombayTV from Grapheine. The role of Blackboardwala [...]
WordPress 2.5 coming soon
Matt Mullenweg gives us a preview of the soon-to-be-released WordPress 2.5.
http://wordpress.org/development/2008/03/wordpress-25-rc2/
They’ve been working with the web geniuses at Happy Cog and the results look awesome.
WordPress is seriously firing on all cylinders. It’s a Good Thing.
New Screencast: the Sakai App Builder Plugin for Eclipse
My new eleven-minute screencast is about how to use Aaron Zeckoski’s App Builder plugin for Eclipse to jumpstart your new Sakai tool projects.
It’s also a great learning tool, since you have a working tool in less than two minutes and you can start playing around with modifications.
As before, new videos are posted here: http://aeroplanesoftware.com/sakai-training-videos
Getting Started with Sakai: Setting Up Eclipse
I have just posted part two of my series of screencasts on how to get started developing for Sakai. This one is all about setting up the Eclipse IDE. Tasty!
Here is your link.
Interface21 now SpringSource
I guess this happened late last year, but it escaped my notice: Interface21, the company behind the Spring Framework, has changed its name to SpringSource and has a spiffy new website to go with it.
The Spring Framework has come to be synonymous with enterprise Java. It’s a great example of the cream rising to the [...]
IMS Common Cartridge Alliance
I just signed up as a dues-paying member of the IMS Common Cartridge Alliance. IMS CC is a standard that has been evolving for several years, with the ultimate aim of creating a single format for publishers to create course materials that can be loaded into any learning management system.
I wrote the underpinnings of IMS [...]