If you are into social sites, check out the newest for OSS: Open Source Universe.

I like this because it seems to me that most people in OSS (developers, designers and even users) tend to cluster around projects. I mean, that makes sense when actually working on the project but mixing with other projects (on a regular basis and not just at the occasional conference) makes sense. If there is regular social interaction, I think that will trickle down to ideas which would make for even better products.

Of course, this isn't just an issue with open source. Technologists seem to want to spend most of their time with people dealing with the same technology. Who today isn't using (even if not developing) multiple OSS applications and tools? On a daily basis I am moving between PHP, MySQL, Postgres, Linux, FireFox, and a plethora of other tools.

So anyway, that's why I wanted to give a shout out to OSU. Now, having said all that, it's a new site and there just isn't much there right now. The forums need help. I don't like the fact that the forum is grouped around project. If I wanted to just hang out with Drupal folks, I would go to the Drupal forums. I think the forums should be grouped by technology. Let database folk hang together, let the PHP, Perl and Python folks hang out in the Language forum, etc.

The link exchange is a but cheesy for my but they are already listing some jobs.

If you don't already have a blog, you can start one. I would rather start one on blogger or wordpress though.

So, give the site a check and maybe post something in the forum.

Lewisc

Technorati : database, open source, oss

I was recently asked this question:

Do you find that its beneficial to start a blog on the blogger platform versus installing it on your own site?

My opinion on this has changed in the last few months. I used to think that blogger or wordpress.com were "good enough". I now think you should host your own blog on your own domain. My only reason for this is the amount of control you have by doing so.

I have started several new blogs (on tech topics) on my own domains. I chose wordpress a my blog software. The number of plug ins that help me format and control my blogs is amazing. I don't want to spend a lot of time tweaking and with these plug ins, it's mostly install and move on.

NOTE: Don't confuse wordpress with wordpress.com. Wordpress is a blogging package (that you can get from wordpress.org). Wordpress.com is a hosting service that uses wordpress as it's blogging software. You can use wordpress the software on your own domain and if you chose wordpress.com as your blogging provider, you will be using wordpress the software (and can ONLY use wordpress the software).

From talking to family, friends, peers and co-workers, I don't think most people care about the domain being a custom domain or the blogspot domain. I have read some bloggers who feel that a custom domain gives you a certain amount of legitimacy that a blogspot or wordpress domain wouldn't. I don't agree.

So, the short answer is that if you want a very quick start up with no muss and no fuss, blogger (or one of the other hosted domains) is a perfectly fine choice. If however, you are like me and want the additional control, you should buy a domain and install your own blogging software. All of the major blogging packages are incredibly simple to install and most web hosters offer additional assistance in the option of cPanel and SimpleScripts.

LewisC

Technorati : blogger, blogspot, domain, hosting, wordpress

Photos courtesy of Logan (5 years old) and a new digital camera. I love the perspective he put on the photos.

Technorati : christmas, family, holiday, vacation

The Amazon AWS blog has a good story about about Soocial.com. Soocial.com is an address book on steroid. It works with (or will work with soon): outlook, blackberry, gmail, mac address book and other phones. They just need to add Yahoo and Windows Contacts.

I wrote about it on my cloud blog, 100% AWS.

The AWS blog post has a good overview of the overall architecture. They are using Postgres and pgpool II on EC2 and EBS. They use RabbitMQ for messaging. For high availability they are using HAProxy and memcache.

It sounds like a pretty sweet setup.

LewisC

Technorati : amazon, aws, cloud computing, pgpool, postgres, postgresql

Foxit just announced a new ebook reader, the Foxit eSllick. At less than a half inch thick, it has a built-in MP3 player and it uses the same eInk technology that Amazon Kindle uses. It comes with an SD slot and a 2GB SD card. It doesn't have wifi but it comes in at $100 dollars less. It also lets you update the device via USB and supports rich PDF documents, that means that you can load your own documents painlessly (unlike the kindle that makes you jump through hoops and does not support rich documents).

It will be temporarily available for $229 (MSRP is $259). That's still more than I would like to pay. I think $99 is the ideal price point for an ebook reader. For that price, I'd like to see an FM tuner and some kind of video playback. I know the eink technology doesn't refresh fast enough for video though. Still $229 is a bit steep.

Since it supports PDF, that means that any of your business documents can be converted (software included). .doc, .ppt, open office, cad and just about any other document can be viewed on the device. PDF can be zoomed for better reading and an interesting feature is reflowing. That means that if you use a large font for easier reading, the device will flow the text so that you don't need to pan around the screen.

As a bonus, you can listen to your music while reading. I don't know anyone who doesn't already have an MP3 player or a cell phone with MP3 capabilities. Having an MP3 player in the reader is a nice touch, I guess, but I would prefer it to be MP3-less and $50 cheaper.

The OS is an embedded Linux running in 128MB of ram on an ARM 400MHz processor. The SD can take up to a 4GB card. The rechargeable lithium ion battery will last 8000 page turns. That's like reading Battlefield Earth 8 times. That's a lot of reading.

I am somewhat tempted to get this. I don't have a kindle or a sony reader and I am an avid reader. I'm also a gadget freak. Still, I can do so much to my EEE PC or my laptop with $200 and both of those are far more useful to me than an ebook reader. I'll have to think about it some more.

LewisC

Technorati : amazon, books, ebook, eslick, foxit, kindle, reader, sony

The local temp on 12/16, 82 degrees. The reason to live in Florida.

Picture of the Day. Dakota, the Siberian Husky, relaxing his old bones in the sun.

LewisC

Technorati : florida, home, riverview, temperature

Open source the way it ought to be. Today, Percona announced a replacement for InnoDB that improves performance and fixes bugs. The new engine is called XtraDB.

According to Vadim at Percona:

It's 100% backwards-compatible with standard InnoDB, so you can use it as a drop-in replacement in your current environment. It is designed to scale better on modern hardware, and includes a variety of other features useful in high performance environments.

The release is pure GPL (v2) and commercial support is available from Percona. If percona keeps this up, they just might become the new MySQL.

The source is available from Launchpad and from Percona. Binaries are also available and OurDelta will start using XtraDB in future builds. Percona expects a 6 month development cycle. I don't see on here how they plan to incorporate contributions but that may just need a little time to figure out. They do say that they have already incorporated most patches that are available and that make sense for their customer base..

This announcement excites me much more than Drizzle ever did.

LewisC

Technorati : database, mysql, open source, osdb

The local temp on 12/16, 92 degrees:

Picture of the day (I got a new camera). I doubt I will really do a picture a day but I like this one. It's some really fuzzy clouds in a weird pattern.

LewisC

Technorati : florida, home, riverview, temperature

There is a new dark Jedi in town

The force is strong in this one

Your Jedi mind tricks are no match for my....Oooh. Bright lights.

Check out these moves!

Bwahahahahaha! Take THAT stupid pillow!

Technorati : family, fatherhood, kids

Well, this will be the final post on this blog. I have been neglecting it anyway. The good news is that I want to pick back up on cloud blogging but I wanted to tie it to my new site, DatabaseWisdom.com. That site has a blog so I created a new blog with the same look and feel but covering cloud topics instead of database topics.

The new blog is cloud computing info (more generic than databases in the cloud). The URL is http://clouddb.info/.

A final note, in addition to the blog, I am writing a Cloud Computing With Amazon book. It will be available on amazon, mobipocketbooks (ebook site) and may other bookstores within the next month. I will be posting an html version, viewable for free, on http://databasewisdom.com/

I will also post updates about the book at http://clouddb.info/

Take care and I hope to see you on the new blog.

LewisC

Technorati : blogging, moving

I have written a new book on SQL DML. This is a total beginner book: how to commit and rollback, how to query, how to add data, etc.

Probably not of interest to most of the people who read this blog but if you know of anyone completely new to SQL, this would make a great Christmas present. Only 14.95. It is completely vendor agnostic, although the examples all use Oracle and MySQL.

You can view the Table Of Contents, Preface and Index here. I plan to release some of the chapters for free on the blog and will make the PDF of the book available at a discount. I have several more books like this (DDL, Intro to Relational Databases and Cloud Computing) under construction. I also plan to do some intermediate and advanced books in the future.

LewisC

Technorati : database, learning, mysql, sql