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Posted at 08:06PM May 22, 2008 by Serge in Development | Comments[1]
Want to win a blazing 100,000 Dollars? Forbes is giving it away.
Forbes has a contest "Boost your Business" , a second time around this year.
It's quite simple, you come up with an idea with your team (small). In 500 words, you outline your business plan and you're done.
Sounds great, considering HP is sponsoring it among other big/medium companies.
What made me curious was going through the legal agreement you have to accept, which most of us neglect.
"The Contest Sponsors, including, but not limited to Forbes.com LLC, and
Hewlett-Packard Company (“Sponsors”) may publicize any initially
submitted entries in full or in part. By entering, participants (1)
acknowledge that Sponsors, Judges, and/or Forbes.com readers may
develop or promote ideas, concepts or products which are similar to any
ideas, concepts or products you may submit as part of your contest
entry; and (2) to the fullest extent permitted by law, agree to release
and indemnify Sponsors, Judges, and/or Forbes.com readers from and
against any and all liability arising out of any similar ideas concepts
or products developed or promoted by Sponsors, Judges, and/or
Forbes.com readers. Sponsors, Judges, and Forbes.com readers will be granted access to some or all of the business descriptions and information submitted
as entries in this Contest. Access to the business ideas will be
granted to the members of the judging panels, visitors to Forbes.com,
and Promosis to screen and conduct judging of entries."
Essentially you will give away your idea, and a right to protect it. Now, i would understand if a portion or a summary of an idea would be publicized for some voting.
Consider this, you're submitting a great idea for your service, and some sponsor (even lowest), can catch this during "judging" and orders it to be developed, obviously they might develop it quicker considering an idea might never get the first place.
If you attempt to develop this and publish it after their promotion date, you will disadvantage and labeled as copy cat, perhaps other legal trouble that may arise.
I hope this post is viewed as much as possible to be aware of all this so called contests.
Here is the link: Contest
Posted at 01:25PM May 20, 2008 by Serge in Politics | Comments[0]
Google releases Google Health for medical records
Google Health, a new service from Google released today (Monday). Not a unique service on the market yet will be most trusted since it comes from the big brother of all search engines , Google.
Microsoft also has a similar service, perhaps not as popular as this one will be , considering the exposure Google has.
Personally speaking this is getting to a point where little startups will have little chance to compete in building such services considering Google has a trusting brand name.
I would really like to see a Google Health API , allowing to build on top of Google Health various applications for various diseases or conditions.
What's next. Google IRS , Google Bank , why not.
Posted at 05:59PM May 19, 2008 by Serge in General | Comments[0]
Watch tennis 24/7, online
Although this is a Dutch language tv, any tennis fan would love to watch a game. And this TV is broadcasting 24/7
URL for streaming: mms://wm1.ubf.jet-stream.nl/nocnsf=channel9
Posted at 02:32PM May 19, 2008 by Serge in Sport | Comments[1]
A correct way of breathing while playing tennis
Ever wonder why those tennis players make awful sound while hitting immensely fast shots? Even men whose unchangeable face from time to time does change in order to make a sound...[Read More]
Posted at 12:01AM May 18, 2008 by Serge in Sport | Comments[1]
Where can you train your shots in tennis?
If you live in a cold country such as Canada , you obviously don't have a lengthy summer to play tennis. A good way to work your handling of a tennis raquet is to play against the wall.
Often you will find a flat wall somewhere outside. A great way to improve your handling is to stay close to to the wall, approximately a meter (few feet) and try to keep the ball in constant rotation with your raquet ....
[Read More]Posted at 09:27AM May 17, 2008 by Serge in Sport | Comments[2]
New Kid on the block (among the J2EE App Servers)
SpringSource has release a beat version of a J2EE Application Server.
We all love Spring because of it's injection capability, allowing to load what you need and not everything.
Hopefully this App Server will have it's success as their framework.
Try it out: visit this url
Posted at 11:58AM May 16, 2008 by Serge in Java | Comments[0]
Pick the colours as a designer
I found this very useful when choosing colours for a site.
www.colorjack.com allows you to pick the colours that make sense.
Posted at 12:19AM May 15, 2008 by Serge in General | Comments[0]
Where is the configuration file of NetBeans
You will find netbeans.conf
which allows you to switch your JVM location or add options to the JVM for a better startup or running GC differently.
Locate your installation of NB:
<install>\etc
Directory etc contains the conf file.
It's a simple init kind of file so # acts as a comment.
As of NetBeans 6.0 and 6.1 , storing Libraries became much more easier and shareable among projects.
</install>
Posted at 12:19AM May 15, 2008 by Serge in Java | Comments[0]
Sorting non-English alphabets using Java
One might need to sort an alphabet that in some internationalized application according to the current Locale.
A good tutorial i found on this matter by Sun: Customizing Collation Rules
That will allow you to sort properly words and letters that are not English.
Here is the link:
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/i18n/text/rule.html
java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/i18n/text/rule.html
Posted at 02:54PM May 14, 2008 by Serge in Java | Comments[0]
Quick helper method InitCap
I had a need to initialize the first letter e.g. SERGE would become Serge
hence i wrote this method that you can use freely.
public static String initCap(String str){
String nstr = str.toLowerCase();
nstr = String.valueOf(nstr.charAt(0)).toUpperCase().concat(nstr.substring(1));
return nstr;
}
Posted at 02:53PM May 14, 2008 by Serge in Java | Comments[0]
What you need to run Display Tag with Struts 2
If you are developing a Struts 2 web application, you'd probably need to have a datagrid ,a table that displays data without re-inventing the wheel.
Struts does not have (at least not now) such component hence we might use a well known and proved tag called DisplayTag (http://displaytag.sourceforge.net)
A few steps that are not well discussed on faq or their documentation:
1. download the displaytag jar
2. add that jar to your classpath
Now the above is seems good and dandy but you need 2 more libraries.
3. Download Apache Commons Beanutils (http://commons.apache.org/beanutils/)
> you only need commons-beanutils.jar (only one)
4. Download Apache Commons Collections (http://commons.apache.org/collections/)
Add these 2 libraries to your classpath and your setup is complete.
Now displaytag was developed for JSP/JSTL web apps, not for struts 2, hence we need to explicitly copy the Struts 2 variable (e.g. List persons) to a request scope of a Servlet, it is like this:
<s:set scope="request" value="persons" name="persons">
Place the above snippet into your the body of a page.
The reference to a tag is made like this:
<%@ taglib uri="http://displaytag.sf.net" prefix="display" %>
Which is placed on top of the jsp page.
For Struts 2 this is a more appropriate way of using Display Tag:
<display:table requesturi="showPersonList.action" rules="all" id="row" name="requestScope.persons">
<display:column title="ID"> <input type="text" /> </display:column>
<display:column title="Name" property="name" sortable="true">
<display:column property="gender">
</display:column>
Notice requestURI is required for Struts 2 applications since displaytag is not aware of extension .action </display:column></display:table></s:set>
Posted at 10:18AM May 13, 2008 by Serge in Java | Comments[0]
Invoke arbitrary method in Struts 2 from a page
public String foo(final String s_) {
return s_ + s_;
}
the following:
<s:property value="foo('huh? ')">
will return: huh?
Posted at 08:54AM May 12, 2008 by Serge in Java | Comments[0]
Implicit Objects in Struts 2 and how to access them
Here is a small reference using OGNL (expressions):
name value #parameters['foo']
or #parameters.foo
request parameter ['foo'] (request.getParameter()) #request['foo'] or
#request.foo request attribute ['foo'] (request.getAttribute()) #session['foo']
or #session.foo session attribute 'foo' #application['foo']
or #application.foo ServletContext attributes 'foo' #attr['foo']
or #attr.foo Access to PageContext if available,
otherwise searches request/session/application respectively
Posted at 08:53AM May 12, 2008 by Serge in Java | Comments[0]
One of my articles on VPS
Some of the pointer on setting up JVM and tuning it for VPS environment.
http://www.developer.com/java/other/article.php/3697421
Posted at 03:02PM May 11, 2008 by Serge in Java | Comments[0]