Chris Johnston » News

What is coming up from Google

Chris Johnston — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 02:26:49 +0000

I just finished watching the keynote address given at Google’s IO conference. This is Google’s developer conference. The keynote contained a lot of information as to what we can expect from Google over the next little while along with a lot of announcements. Google Gears, Android, AppEngine, iGoogle Sandbox, GWT, and other products were showcase, demoed and, for the most part, opened up to a wider audience.

Hopefully, they will put some of the sessions from the conference online as well. Google, if you’re listening, I would like all of the AppEngine sessions put online, please.

It’s about time – iPhone coming to Canada

Chris Johnston — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 02:41:31 +0000

Rogers announced today that they had come to an agreement with Apple and will be bringing the iPhone to Canada later this year. I can’t wait. No details were released so we will have to wait to see what the plans are.

Redecorating the place

Chris Johnston — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 05:13:22 +0000

Since WordPress recently released version 2.3, I decided now would be a good time to do a little redecorating. The biggest change is the new theme. It is clean and simple and provides lots of space for code snippets, although it needs some modification. I am not completely happy with the way it looks quite yet. The biggest problem so far is how it represents lists.

The other big change is that I may change the way links are created. Currently, I am using the date, but I am thinking of changing it to the title. This will result in most search results not working for a while. I am not a master of .htaccess, so if anyone knows how to make this change and still keep the old links working, please share.

Macrodobe? Adomedia?

Chris Johnston — Tue, 19 Apr 2005 02:52:23 +0000

As you have probably heard, Adobe has bought, is attempting to buy, will be buying, Macromedia for approximately 3.4 billion dollars. My first thought when I heard the news was RIP Macromedia, you where much loved. As the day has gone on, I am not sure if this thought has changed much. My gut reaction is still that this is not a good thing for Macromedia and definitely not a good thing for web developers, or those of us who use Macromedia products. I think most of all I feel cheated and ripped off by this proposed buy-out, like somehow Macromedia has betrayed its users and sold-out.

Now don’t get me wrong, I like Adobe products and I don’t think they are the bad guys here. I just think that the two companies should stay separate and competitors. Merging and creating one huge company in the graphics world is not going to any designers any favours. I firmly believe that the competition between the two over the years helped to create better products for the end user.

In addition, what is going to happen to all the great Macromedia products? I have heard that this will mean great things for Flash, but what about Fireworks, Dreamweaver, Freehand, ColdFusion, Director, Flex, JRun, and all the other products Macromedia develops? I can see them keeping Flash, Dreamweaver, and the server technologies, but I am not so confident about the graphics based apps like Fireworks and Freehand. Hopefully they will kill off ImageReady and integrate Fireworks into Photoshop, but who knows.

In addition, the cultures of the two companies seem to be totally different. Macromedia is a very open company that is very in tune and in touch with what its users are doing with their products. Adobe seems to be a much more closed company. It will be interesting to see which culture is the more influential. I think it would be good for Adobe to open up a little.

Mike Chambers has an interesting post on his thoughts about the merger and some links to further resources.

WordPress 1.5 Released

Chris Johnston — Fri, 18 Feb 2005 00:04:32 +0000

WordPress 1.5 was officially released today. This new version is called Strayhorn and includes a lot of updates over 1.2:

Templates and site customization
Greater control over comments to decrease comment spam
Tha ability to manage more than just a blog

I am not sure if I will attempting to upgrade tonight, but if you see this site offline or errors over the next several days, it will most likely be because I am upgrading to 1.5.

OpenSolaris.org “open” for business

Chris Johnston — Tue, 25 Jan 2005 21:12:48 +0000

OpenSolaris.org website has been launched for all those interested in downloading the new OpenSolaris operating system.

The opensolaris.org web site will be the center for OpenSolaris activity. Program content will be released in stages. The source code for one of the Solaris operating system’s most advanced features — Dynamic Tracing (DTrace) — is available here. We invite you to take a look. Expect to see buildable Solaris code here in Q2 2005.

WindowsDevCenter.com: Run Mac OS X on a PC

Chris Johnston — Fri, 21 Jan 2005 20:10:19 +0000

WindowsDevCenter.com has an article on running Mac OS X on a PC. I have heard of the Pear PC emulator project before and I have seen several different articles detaling how to get it up and running, but this one may be the easiest to follow of them all. If you have a fast computer and access an 10.3 install disk, you may want to check the article out.

Apparently, someone has created a Pear PC configuration tool that goes a long way to making the install a lot easier for mere mortals. From the screenshots provided in the article, this tools seems to really simplify the entire install/config process.

Personally though, I am not sure how applicable this article is with the release of the mac mini. For just $629 CAD, you can save yourself the trouble and actually run OS X on a mac.

PostgreSQL 8.0 Released

Chris Johnston — Thu, 20 Jan 2005 00:17:38 +0000

PostgreSQL 8.0 has been released. The biggest feature added to this release is native Windows support. Up till the release of version 8, windows support was done through cygwin. Some of the other features include:

Savepoints
Point-In-time Recovery
Perl Server-Side Language

I have been using PostgreSQL as my primary RDBMS for the past 6 months and have been really impressed with it. I have also been waiting for version 8.0 for the last 6 months as well. Below are some links of interest:

More IE Flaws

Chris Johnston — Sun, 09 Jan 2005 22:44:38 +0000

If you are still using Internet Explorer and have not made the move to Firefox, you should be aware that there are three more unpatched flaws lurking in your browser of choice. CNet News.com has a full article detailing the new threats. This is just three more reasons to make the switch to Firefox.

Slashdot | Beware ‘Fedora-Redhat’ Fake Security Alert

Chris Johnston — Mon, 25 Oct 2004 17:08:55 +0000

There is a new security threat making the rounds through email inboxes everywhere. The odd thing this time is that the target is Fedora and Redhat linux distros. If you get an email saying you need to install a security software patch, delete it. It is a trojan and not something you want to install onto your computer. Read more over at Slashdot