Java EE service infrastructure

Figure 1-4 SL-351-EE5

hiking sites

About a year ago a coleague at Uniway told me about geocaching.
Geocaching is a game, where you have to find hidden objects (caches) based on GPS coordinates and hints.
A great way to have an entertaining and beautiful walk in an area you don't know.
With our friends we did a cache related to the flooding of the Yzer estuary in World War I.

This weekend I stumbled upon routeyou, another nice walking site. They have got plenty of descriptions of hikes and bike trips. Here's an example walk.

Netbeans 6.5 is out

Highlights:

• PHP support
• better javascript/AJAXsupport
• better SQL support
• Groovy support
• automatic compile on save
• CamelCase code completion!
• Support for Windows UNC paths (shared network folders)!
• slow startup!

The UML module is still unbundled (and rightly so)

Free Microsoft Anti-virus coming

Microsoft will add their Live OneCare consumer anti-virus (subscription now $50/year) as a free offering, codenamed Morro (after a Brazilian town), from the second half of 2009 on.
It is difficult for MicroSoft to sell stuff that corrects security issues within their own products.
OneCare had less than 2% of the antivirus market. This is expected to rise now :)
Morro will be based on Micorosft Forefront client security and is expected to merge with the existing free Windows Defender (anti-spyware).
Meanwhile MicroSoft continues the Forefront Security Suite, their centrally managed enterprise security offering.

Harry Potter on Open Source Software

Never trust anything that can think for itself
If you can't see where it keeps its brain.

Arthur Weasley

chat aggregator

I am using MSN and Skype for chat/talk.
The rest of the project group wanted Google talk.
To keep things organised I went looking for a desktop aggregator.
Nobody supports Skype and because it is a bit flaky i decided to ditch Skype.

-digsby: private company storing all kinds of information about you including your passwords (we will not look at them)
- digsby: closed source
-digsy: windows only (just like me)
+digsby: also supports social networks like linked in.

Privacy is a concern with digsby and I would have gone for pidgin, but digsby installs and operates so much smoother that I fell for it.

Only drawback is that it starts with the buddy list open, but that's supposed to be a bug.

i'll keep an eye on pidgin to see if it gets any better.

Spring eats Groovy

With venture capital burning in its pockets, Springsource has now acquired G2One, the company behind Groovy and Grails.
Sure is a combination of two great technologies.