Blogging, Baby Making & Shoe Shopping

A few random thoughts about nothing in particular. Pretend to enjoy them, okay? Writer’s block has been hitting me hard (and I bruise easily).

Which Sounds Better, Blalking or Woggling?

I’ve been told in the past that blogging comes as naturally to me as walking. I assume this was a compliment, although if this individual was thinking about a time I tripped or something it’d have to be categorized as an insult.

Still, compliment or kick to the shin, I have to agree with the statement. Blogging IS like walking to me. And no, it’s not because I walk funny. Although, I once had a freshman student of mine tell me I walked like a pimp. I’m assuming this was a compliment, too. Pimps are cool, right?

No, blogging is like walking to me because I blog and walk at my own pace. Others might be running around airports and malls like chickens with their heads cut off, but not me. I walk at a nice, comfortable pace. And no amount of masked gunmen and sales at the Gap is going to make me walk faster.

The same holds true with my blogging. Do others blog more frequently than I do? Sure. Do I wish blogged more? Of course. But this is my pace. If I blogged faster, I might pull a hamstring.

Wait a second…

My bad. It wasn’t walking. The person said blogging came as naturally to me as BREATHING. Okay, forget everything I wrote above.

I have to agree with that statement. Blogging IS like breathing to me. And no, it’s not because I breathe funny. Although…

There’s a Kick to the Baby Maker

I’m not sure what’s more embarrassing about the 50-game suspension for substance abuse by baseball player Manny Ramirez of the Dodgers.

Is it the fact he’s been caught and suspended for taking a substance typically used by steroid abusers? Or is it the fact the entire world now knows that, thanks to steroids, he won’t be having any Manny Ramirez Juniors anytime soon?

Personally, I think his hair is the most embarrassing thing. Thanks to this story, there are thousands of articles written about the man. And most every story includes a photo with his inexplicable hair.

That’s got to be embarrassing.

Why Buy the Cow…

You know what’s not awesome?

Turning on HGTV and seeing yet another episode of House Hunters featuring an unmarried couple shopping for a home. Let me paint a picture for you.

I’ll turn to the show when it’s already been on for a few minutes. I’ll see a man and a woman, and their realtor, looking for a new house. Immediately, my brain thinks, “Here is a married couple. I think they should pick house #2.”

Fast forward to the end of the show. They’ve selected their house, and now we get to see how they are doing six months or so later. This is how it usually goes down:

Woman: “We love our new house.”

Man: “One of the first things we did when we moved in was paint the kitchen.”

Woman: “We finally have a fenced-in backyard for our dog. And if that wasn’t wonderful enough, (name of man) proposed to me two weeks ago.”

Call me old fashioned if you must, but when did the whole “living together before marriage” thing become commonplace?

I don’t mean to offend or pick on anyone’s life choices. It just frustrates me that this has become the norm because it means people like my younger sisters grow up seeing (and possibly believing) it’s the norm. And if it IS the norm now, count me among the prudes who believe it shouldn’t be.

“How can we know we’re compatible if we don’t live togther first,” some would argue.

“You don’t buy shoes without trying them on first, right?”

No, no I don’t.

But I also don’t take shoes from the store home with me and sleep with them for a year or two before deciding to buy them.

I’m classy like that.

Hand Shaking Is So Medieval. Lets End It.

Every once in a while we go on a little rant here about something that bugs us. In the past we’ve done hit jobs on email, voicemail and business cards at various times. But there’s one thing that bugs me more than all of those things put together - the ubiquitous hand shake.

I’m not just talking about the sweaty palms handshake, which sends shudders down my back. I even take issue with the firm and dry handshakes that we engage in every day. I’d like to see the ritual ended.

Hand shaking goes back a long, long way. Wikipedia says it was practiced as far back as the 2nd century BC. The story I’ve always heard is that shaking a someone’s hand shows that you hold no weapon. Since most people are right handed and would hold a knife in that hand, we shake right hands.

Whatever the reason for hand shaking, it isn’t needed. Like the Qwerty keyboard (which is designed to slow us down so that the typewriter doesn’t jam), it’s a relic of an older time that’s not only no longer needed but actually causes inefficiency. I can live with the keyboard. But I’d rather not have to catch another flu or cold from a hand shake.

The fact is that hand shakes spread germs. You shake someone’s hand and then touch your nose or mouth and you can get sick. I don’t like getting sick. But to turn down a hand shake is such an insult that there’s little choice. The hand is out there, in front of me waiting, so like everyone else I grasp it.

Whenever I do shake a hand I’m completely aware of it, can’t stop thinking about it, until I can wash my hands. Sometimes in a meeting I’ll shake hands all around, then excuse myself to the bathroom to wash my hands, then return. It draws attention, though, and people have pointed it out to me as odd. My response is that it’s nothing personal but I don’t want to get sick. If I get sick I have to take time off and it hurts my business. And there’s a good chance I’ll get other TechCrunchers sick, too, which is doubly bad.

So let’s start a new trend - not shaking hands. You can do a fist touch instead. or a solid, respectful head nod. I’ll even start bowing if I have to. Fox has a couple of other options, but I absolutely refuse to engage in an elbow bump. Other than that I don’t really care. But just like I don’t swap spit with everyone who walks into a room, I’d prefer not to swap germs via the ancient but disgusting habit of shaking hands, either. Deal?

Crunch Network: CrunchGeardrool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

My First Facebook Quiz Creation

Fellow Facebookers I have created my first-ever FB quiz:

What Stupid Facebook Quiz Are You?

Ten questions that determine which dumb Facebook quiz you are. It is scientifically based, by the way if you have concerns about the accuracy.

Go take it and find your place in the world of ridiculous quizzes.

________________________________________________________

[Humor-blogs.com and Blog-Storm.com love Facebook quizzes. Go there to read blog posts that have nothing to do with them.]

Twitter Tips Book Contest: Tweet to Win

A new Twitter book, Twitter Tips, Tricks, and Tweets, is out now in paperback.

Written by Paul McFedries, whose books have sold more than 3 million copies worldwide, with a foreword by yours truly, it’s an introduction to Twitter from the very basic (setting up an account) to the more complex - blog integration, and optimizing TweetDeck for efficient tweeting.

If you’re new to Twitter, this book is for you; if you’re a seasoned geek and regular Mashable reader, it’s one to give to your family and friends when they ask what the heck this Twitter thing is. (more...)

Nuts: Twitter Inventor About To Launch His Next Project, Code-named Squirrel

Almost immediately following Twitter coming back from a planned downtime this afternoon, co-founder and current chairman Jack Dorsey sent out a tweet letting his followers know that he was, “Getting ready to embark on something new and entirely different. Excited!” Dorsey is getting ready to launch his next startup, he’s confirmed to us. As the guy who actually invented Twitter, this is notable.

Dorsey will be starting a new company code-named Squirrel, we hear from a source knowledgeable about the new company. Here’s what we know so far: It’s a service that allows anyone with an iPhone to become a merchant. Just like the wireless credit card swipers you see at certain shops and restaurants, you can carry around your iPhone and take payments. Apparently, the idea is that this will allow any individual to take credit card payments on a mobile device, kind of like what PayPal does for the web.

Squirrel is both a physical device add-on to the iPhone as well as an iPhone app. Ingeniously, the device derives enough power from the physical swiping of the credit card to then read the card, so it requires to external power from the iPhone or anywhere else. The physical device apparently looks something like an acorn, thus the code name Squirrel.

But Dorsey is not leaving Twitter. He told me just now, “I’ll never leave Twitter, it’s my life’s work and baby and I’ll always be a major part of the endeavor, strategically and operationally. But, I do have some other ideas I’m pursuing and yes, we’re going to launch soon.”

Crunch Network: CrunchBasethe free database of technology companies, people, and investors

85+ of the Best Twitterers Designers Should Follow

There are thousands of designers on Twitter tweeting about everything from ongoing projects to their personal lives. But only a small percentage of those tweet about design topics of interest to other designers and design addicts. These people cover everything from their design process to their own projects, and design resources from all over the web. Below is a list of more than 85 of those Twitterers.

Have another designer to recommend? Tell us about them in the comments. (more...)

Notify.me Brings Instant RSS Updates To Yet Another Browser Toolbar

Notify.me, a service that delivers instant notifications on your favorite topics the way you would like to receive them (i.e. by SMS, e-mail, IM, desktop app or on the web), is adding a new feature next week that should make its die-hard users primarily very happy. The rest of the world will probably care much less.

It’s not that Notify.me at its core isn’t useful, albeit not very unique. For a lot of people, instant updates for anything that has an RSS feed (not only blogs or news sites, but also classifieds listings, for example) with the ability to filter incoming by keyword makes sense, particularly if they need a lot of control over how the updates get delivered based on what the source is. Yet I can’t help thinking that the latest feature the startup is releasing, a browser toolbar, has ‘overkill’ written all over.

What the toolbar does is bring Notify.me’s core functionalities to a persistent toolbar whenever you’re browsing the web. Users can set delivery methods and filter rules directly from the toolbar, and the company has also integrated Ping.fm (which it recently partnered with) and AddThis directly to the toolbar so you can easily share and bookmark websites you’re visiting on a wide variety of social networking services.

Personally, I wouldn’t use this service as I would find it incredibly annoying to constantly have a toolbar on my screen that’s not only persistent but also pings me with new notifications every so often. There’s an abundance of new toolbars launching nowadays, and somehow I don’t think that’s what the next web is all about (quite the contrary, actually). I would love to get your thoughts on this as well.

Similar services include Yotify and Notifixious.

CrunchBase Information

Notify.me

Information provided by CrunchBase

Crunch Network: CrunchBasethe free database of technology companies, people, and investors

TwitDoc: Proving That Every File Format Will Eventually Be Shareable Over Twitter

Twitter is quickly turning into the media sharing platform of choice for many people, despite the fact that it, uh, doesn’t have any actual media sharing functionality. But a variety of services are popping up to fill the need, including countless Twitter-specific sites for sharing images, music, and video.

Today TwitDoc is launching what appears to be the first service for sharing documents over Twitter, bringing support for PDFs, Microsoft Office Documents, and a bunch of other file formats. The site has integrated with popular document sharing hub Scribd to make the process as painless as possible - it only takes around 20 seconds to send a document, and you don’t have to sign up to get started. To use the service, you enter your Twitter user name and password, choose the document or photo you’d like to send out, and add any text you’d like to include alongside the document’s link. Hit upload and you’re done.

It’s a handy tool, but I doubt it will reach the same level of popularity as TwitPic and its ilk - most people simply don’t have as many documents that they’d like to share with all of their Twitter followers. Still, it will definitely be helpful for sharing reports you find interesting, or scanned images that wouldn’t be readable if they were shrunk and compressed (which some image services do).

CrunchBase Information

TwitDoc

Information provided by CrunchBase

Crunch Network: CrunchGeardrool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Tweetmeme Is Getting Freakin Awesome

Tweetmeme is on a tear. According to Compete, the Twitter-centric link tracker went from nowhere in February, 2009 (with 26,000 unique visitors) to more than tenfold increase in March (to 385,000 uniques). Nick Halstead, The CEO of UK-based Fav.or.it, the company behind Tweetmeme, tells me he is tracking closer to 200,000 uniques a month based on yesterday’s visitors, but that he is adding 50 percent a week. Tweetmeme seems to be pulling way ahead of the other Twitter link sites such as Twitturly or Twit Links. Any way you slice it, Tweetmeme is doing something right.

The site shows the most popular links on Twitter ranked by a combination of the number times the link has been Tweeted (shown as a big number beside each headline), recentness, and momentum of Tweets. It also categorizes different news stories based on the title of the post or article, the underlying domain, and hash tags within the Tweets. You can sort by Comedy, Entertainment, Gaming, Lifestyle, Science, Sports, Technology, or World & Business. You can also sort by news, Images, or videos. It pulls together 200,000 links, images, and videos every day now. And you can follow what is makes it on Tweetmeme’s homepage via Twitter itself by following the @Tweetmeme account or sub-accounts for each channel such as @tm-technology or @tm_comedy.

Today, it added OAuth, which lets you sign in with your Twitter account and retweet headlines without leaving the page. It also launched a toolbar, which will be controversial because it opens up the underlying link within a Tweetmeme URL and frame much like the Diggbar does. Instead of showing how many times the story has been Dugg, the frame shows a count of how many times the story has been Tweeted along with a “Shuffle” button (equivalent to the Diggbar’s “Random” button) that will take you to another highly Tweeted story.

I am not a big fan of the toolbar in principle, but I can see why Halstead added it. It keeps people on Tweetmeme and drives more activity. At least, it can be easily closed. But with every site adding its own frames these days, pretty soon there won’t be any room left for the actual destination site you are trying to look at.

What I am a big fan of, though, is that after a recent relaunch, it just keeps adding features. A few weeks ago it added a”live” tab which shows the most Tweeted links stream onto the page much like FreindFeed now handles your personal activity stream. Thankfully, you can set it to stream only stories that have been Tweeted at least 5, 10, or 20 times. Even setting it to 5 links is unreadable because the stream moves down too fast, but at 10 or 20 its becomes more manageable and addictive in that you can watch the most popular links in the Twittersphere stream by in real time.

This live stream of relevant headlines is much more immediate even than what you find on Techmeme, which can take hours to change meaningfully. With so many sites gunning for Techmeme’s crown as the ultimate arbiter of what news is being talked about the most on the Web (I wrote about one such attempt earlier today), the real threat is going to come from somebody like Tweetmeme, which plays to different strengths. The question is whether Twitter will be a better place to mine for buzz than blogs, news sites, or the rest of the Web.

Right now, I’d say the answer is no. Not because Tweetmeme doesn’t surface the most Tweeted stories, but because everyone on Twitter seems to be obsessed with linking to stories about Twitter! For instance, right now 6 of the top ten headlines on Tweetmeme are about Twitter acquisition rumors. To be fair, that was also the top story on Tehmeme for most of the day. But at least Techmeme has moved on (to Kindle rumors!). Will the stories on Tweetmeme ever become more relevant and timely than on Techmeme? If I were Gabe Rivera, I’d start worrying now.

CrunchBase Information

Tweetmeme

Twitturly

Information provided by CrunchBase

Crunch Network: CrunchBasethe free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Hackers Temporarily Seize Control Of Google Morocco Domain Name

Google.co.ma, the domain name for Google Morocco’s search portal, was taken hostage by hackers earlier today reportedly for several hours before the problem got fixed (it’s working fine again now). We got a bunch of tips about it, and the situation lasted long enough for lots of people to take screenshots of the website the domain name briefly pointed to due to the hack.

You can find loads of screenshots here and here, but the main domain name pointed to the website shown on top of this post.

There’s a bit of confusion about how the hack was performed exactly, but it appears as if the hackers found a way into NIC.ma, which controls the DNS for the country, and targeted the Google domain name especially. The domain was pointed to a different server, and the web page above was shown when people tried to access the search engine. Google apparently at one point automatically relayed visitors from Morocco to Google.com instead of Google.co.ma, but it took a while to get the latter functioning correctly again.

PAKbugs.com leads to a forum where Pakistan hackers hang out, and the names on top of the web page above are all members of the message board. They’re being proud of it here.

(Via ArabCrunch)

Rihanna In Nude Photo Scandal

Rihanna has become the latest star caught up in a nude photo scandal after salacious snapshots allegedly featuring the singer were posted online on Friday.

Rihanna's face can clearly be seen in shots that show the Umbrella singer stripping provocatively for the camera, but other photos show only segments of a woman's naked body.

The most incriminating full-length shot appears to feature the sexy star partially clothed taking a photograph of herself in the mirror of a large hotel suite bathroom. The messages 'I love you' and 'I miss you' are written on the mirror.

The girl in the photo definitely looks like Rihanna, but the subject's face is covered by a BlackBerry phone camera.

The seven pictures led to websites like Imagehaven.net almost crashing as fans stormed the Internet looking for the scandalous photos, which reports suggest were taken at The London hotel in West Hollywood, where Rihanna once stayed with ex-boyfriend Chris Brown.

The new photos come just days after Rihanna made her first public appearance following an alleged fight with Brown in Los Angeles on the eve of the Grammy Awards in February.

The R&B star performed briefly alongside Kanye West at the Costume Institute Gala in New York on Monday.

Brown still faces jail time if he's found guilty of allegedly beating his then-girlfriend and threatening to kill her during the fight.

See more photos of Rihanna here!

Heartworms in Cats: Protect Your Cat Today

I was doing a post over at the petblog on Shine (the women's network at Yahoo!) about cats and heartworms and I thought I'd share some of that here. When I was working at an animal hospital as a vet-tech, many years ago, we were just learning about heartworms - in dogs. Nobody ever said anything about heartworms in cats.

I wondered about it - back then. But, as a big proponent of keeping your cat indoors, and someone who always has kept her cat indoors, I didn't let the cats and heartworms issue keep me up at night. Not to mention, I figure the docs would know if we should be testing cats for heartworms.

Well, it turns out that cats DO get heartworms! They get them the same way dogs do - from mosquitoes. Here's the technical explanation from the PurinaCare Pet Health Library,

"Heartworm Disease is caused by a worm, Dirofilaria immitis, and is spread by mosquitoes. When a mosquito feeds on an infected animal, usually a dog, it ingests microscopic larvae in the blood. These microfilariae mature in the mosquito for about two weeks. When the mosquito bites a susceptible animal the infectious larvae are injected into its tissues. They migrate through the animals body, maturing into adult worms over a period of months. The adult worms live in the heart and major blood vessels where they reproduce to create new microfilariae. The time from infection to appearance of microfilariae is about six months."

While the article goes on to say cats getting heartworm disease is less prevalent than dogs getting heartworms, the issue remains: you need to be aware of this and make sure you talk to your vet about it! The symptoms, according to the article, are pretty ordinary (IMHO): they include coughing, difficulty breathing, vomiting, lethary, loss of appetite and seizures. Um...I think if MY cat was doing those things...especially the seizures, I'd have her at the vet's as fast as my car would get me there!

I've borrowed the picture off of the Pet Health Library site, because it really gives you a sense of how heartworms invade an animal's heart. The best thing to do is give treatment - especially as this summer promises to be hot and humid. Treatment involves medication given monthly. Even kittens can start with it, and...make sure you have your cat tested, every year! Even if you keep him indoors! Mosquitoes don't discriminate between indoors and outdoors!

Note that I'm hoping you'll bring this up at your next vet visit, whether that's for issues, or just a regular check up. Truth is, we sometimes take cats for granted because they seldom complain. Sometimes, they go off and hide, so we don't always notice that they're feeling poorly. It's not good to just assume everything is all right.

I'm not a vet or a technician, anymore. I'm just a pet blogger that wants you to be aware of heartworm disease, both for your dog and your cat. Talk to your vet. It's time.

Jennifer Aniston Brings Management To NYC

Jennifer Aniston hits the red carpet in a beautiful Balenciaga dress at the screening of her new movie, Management at Landmark’s Sunshine Cinema on Tuesday (May 5) in New York City.

The 40-year-old actress finished off her look with Fred Leighton earrings, a Ferragamo clutch and Christian Louboutin T-strap shoes. The event was sponsored by The Cinema Society and Tommy Hilfiger.

Last night, Jen switched places with Jimmy Fallon on his late-night talk show. Aniston did the interviewing and Jimmy did the answering! Check out the clip below.

You can also check out Aniston bowling grapefruits! And her talking about filling in as a talk show host at ETOnline.

10+ pictures inside of Jennifer Aniston bringing Management to NYC…

RAID vs SSD vs FusionIO

In benchmarks passion (see my two previous posts) I managed to setup all three devices (RAID was on board; Intel X25-E SSD connected to HighPoint controller, FusionIO card) on our working horse Dell PowerEdge R900 (btw, to do that I had to switch from CentOS 5.2 to Ubuntu 8.10, as CentOS was not able to start with attached SSD card to HighPoint controller) and along with other tests I ran tpcc-like IO-bound workload on all devices.

For tests I used MySQL 5.4/InnoDB, and all other parameters are the same from previous posts (100W, buffer_pool 3GB). Filesystem - XFS mounted with nobarrier option.

Graphical results are here

and average results:

RAID10 - 7439.850 TPM
SSD - 10681.050 TPM
FusionIO - 17372.250 TPM

However what should be noted - both SSD and FusionIO are run in “non-durable” mode, that is you may lose some transactions in case of power outage (see my post http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2009/03/02/ssd-xfs-lvm-fsync-write-cache-barrier-and-lost-transactions/).

While results for SSD (note it is single device, in comparison to RAID 10 on 8 disks) and FusionIO are impressive, it is worth to consider price/performance parameter.

Here is my very rough calculation:
For RAID 10 we use 8 73GB SAS 2.5″ 15K RPM disks, with price 190$ per disks it gives us 1520$ for 292GB useful space, or ~ 5.2$ per GB.
For SSD I can get 32GB card for 390$, which is ~12.1$ per GB
For FusionIO I really not sure what is price (it was given as only for tests), but quick googling gave me 30$ per GB, so for 160GB card gives 4800$.

Now simple dividing TPM on price of IO system, we have
RAID 10 - 4.8 TPM / $
SSD - 27 TPM / $
FusionIO - 3.6 TPM / $

Please note that price of transaction is not the main criteria to consider, as total TCO for systems with SSD may be much cheaper (considering you need less servers, less space, less power). Also worth to consider that SSD is only 32GB space and to have the same space as FusionIO we need 4 cards (but it still will be cheaper than FusionIO), but it also may improve performance as such setup will be able to handle IO requests in parallel.

Call for opinions: Do we need MySQL 5.0 with MySQL 5.4 performance

MySQL 5.4 comes with Innodb engine which seems to have much better performance than MySQL 5.0 - this is due to locking and IO patches from Google integrated in this release (which are similar to appropriate Percona patches) as well as some unique fixes such as different innodb_thread_concurrency handling and other optimization.

Should we take Innodb from MySQL 5.4 and merry it with unique Percona patches (adaptive checkpoints, additional undo slots, profiling, etc) and integrate it with MySQL 5.0 ? How useful would you find it ?

Currently we see a lot of customers not quite ready to update to MySQL 5.1 in particular as there is little in this version which benefits their workload, which consists of the queries running just fine on 5.0.
5.4 especially introduces optimizer changes which besides positive impact for some queries may break something which works well now.

In general I find the current situation with Innodb is quite strange - leaving apart Innodb derivatives, like XtraDB there are 3 innodb versions around. There is MySQL 5.0 version which did not get significant changes for around 2 years now. There is Innodb Plugin which has significant architectural changes such as new storage format, compression and fast index build. Innodb plugin 1.0.3 got some Google changes for CPU scalability but not IO patches. I expected Innodb to announce plugin is now stable at users conference and may be release the version with complete set of changes from google but instead we get MySQL 5.4 release with yet another set of Innodb changes. Why not to include plugin in MySQL 5.4 with relevant performance changes instead ? This would highlight it status as future Innodb code base.

Now I’m confused - if Innodb Plugin is not taking place of default Innodb in MySQL 5.4 will this ever going to happen ?

Looking at initial benchmarks I’m very impressed with Sun Performance Team work though it looks like there was not a lot of cooperation with Innodb team (otherwise I’d expect plugin to have same codebase). I also do not think development was done in true open source spirit - trading making a big marketing splash for true openness.

Where does this leave XtraDB ? The new MySQL 5.4 release is faster than XtraDB in some workloads and this is great. Competition makes the blood move and keep developer excited. We will look into the changes and adopt the best to XtraDB.

---

Entry posted by peter

Fox 18 Charlotte on craigslist

Charlotte blogger writes about Craigslist-related crimes:

This past Thursday night I was 9on the Fox News at 10 of our local FOX affiliate here in Charlotte talking once again about the problems with craigslist. The video of the segment can be seen here.

However what I want to talk about is the new team at Fox 18. In most cases with TV interview there’s a lot of footage that they didn’t show which is too bad because I thought the reporter that I spoke with, Lyra Manning, did the best job of interviewing me so far. She asked a lot of in depth questions that unfortunately did not make it to air. I think that she did a better job than th epeople at CNN and 48 Hours.

I also have to commend the News at 10’s sister show Fox News Edge which is shown right afterward. The hosts on Edge, Morgan Fogarty and Brotha Fred, did a particularly excellent job discussing the situation with craigslist. That video can be seen here.

How the NetBeans Platform is Used in Large Commercial Enterprise Environments

Commercial NetBeans Platform developer Bernd Ruelicke, who I interviewed in Oil & Gas Exploration on the NetBeans Platform, sent me a few interesting links about OTHER applications in the oil & gas world that are also written on the NetBeans Platform.

One of these is very well described in this document (PDF):

Building a Standards-Based Visualization Framework for Customized Seismic Analysis and Quality Control Workflows

The document describes INTViewer, a geology and geophysics data visualization software application designed and developed just for exploration geoscientists. It is created by INT, headquartered in Houston, TX, and is one of a set of products used by leading organizations and Fortune 500 companies in industries as diverse as oil and gas, finance, medical imaging, telecommunications, and defense.

Here's an interesting part, relating to Java and the NetBeans Platform, from the above PDF document:

An important starting point when building the INTViewer to be used as an accessible viewing tool was to write the software in Java and the NetBeans Rich Client Platform to support its plug-in architecture. Java is a cross-platform programming environment with object-oriented language, good developer productivity, and a well established performance track record. The NetBeans platform offered the requisite reliable and flexible application architecture that makes it easy to create robust and extensible applications. A NetBeans application typically consists of a set of modules or plug-ins. The NetBeans runtime environment understands what a module is, manages dependencies and versioning, handles modules lifecycle, and enables the interaction between modules in the same application. NetBeans has a further advantage of being an Open Source project that makes up a very active and diverse community, in which many people around the world are developing blogs, books, tutorials and training material.

By leveraging Java and NetBeans, the intention was to offer a flexible viewing platform that could be enhanced through plug-ins for implementation of new data formats, new processing functionality, new data views, and even complete custom workflows. Each plug-in is packaged as a single jar file (java archived format) that can simply be dropped inside a special folder for activation.

As a result of the abovementioned pluggability, customers of INTViewer are able to extend it, such as in the case of StatoilHydro. Headquartered in Norway, StatoilHydro is an integrated technology-based international energy company primarily focused on upstream oil and gas operations. StatoilHydro has about 30,000 employees in 40 countries. It is also a company that uses INTViewer and its Java Plugin API to create a Velocity Scanning Workflow that helps improve seismic imaging in complex structures:

Customer Stories: StatoilHydro

Thanks again to Bernd Ruehlicke for the above link! There you'll read several cool things, such as:

A Velocity Scanning plug-in for INTViewer has been delivered to StatoilHydro. The new functionality was delivered as a single far file (Java Archived File) that is installed simply by copying it into a dedicated folder inside the INTViewer installation. This straightforward solution was possible because INTViewer is written in Java and uses the NetBeans Rich Client Platform to support its plug-in architecture. Java is a cross-platform programming environment that offers a powerful object-oriented language, offering very good developer productivity and outstanding performance. The NetBeans platform provides a reliable and flexible application architecture that makes it easy to create robust and extensible applications.

As of this writing, StatoilHydro is using the plug-in to process a 4,000sq meters survey, corresponding to 120GB of volume seismic data. The viewer handles synchronized visualization of 3 to 5 of the migrated dataset, visualization of the 100% model and of the new interpolated mode with no difficulty. Only the visible traces need to be loaded into the viewer (usually along an inline or cross-line) and the interpolated velocity is calculated on the fly.

And that's how the NetBeans Platform is used over and over again by, at a rough guess, probably hundreds of companies around the world. And why wouldn't they? As Bernd points out in the interview referred to above: "The NetBeans Platform is really the only true Swing based application platform out there."

50 Ways To Use Twitter

50 Ways To Use Twitter

1. Tell people what's blooming in your Garden.
2. Give a little Grandmotherly Love.
3. Use twitterfeed to feed your blog to twitter.
4. Help spread the word about keeping cool dogs out of hot cars!
5. Announce your artwork "Pick of the Week" on Zazzle.
6. Let people know the 411 on ebay.
7. Give 10 Bright Ideas to Make Your Home Energy Efficient.
8. Use Squidcasting.
9. Show people The Funniest Squidoo Lensmasters.
10. Ask who would win in a fight? Kool-Aid Man or Hawaiian Punch's Punchy?
11. Invite your friends to play Moola!
12. Share the life story of your Toyota Truck.
13. Explain why Orlando Attractions are the best Ever.
14. Let people know what Basa is.
15. Invite people to join your Charity Challenge!
16. Tell people that Kenny Chesney is Hot in more ways than one!
17. Show off the Hottest Tattoo Pictures and Designs!
18. Showcase the Top 10 Tiki Bars.
19. Give out some Inspirational Messages.
20. Use twhirl!
21. Support a Presidential Candidate.
22. Sell your Lenses.
23. Show off The Coolest Blogs Featuring Squidoo Ever!
24. Educate with Baby Poop 101.
25. Show why Cats are Smarter than Dogs.
26. Sell them a Unique Toilet Seat.
27. Ask a fun question like: If you were a robot, and I knew but you didn't, would you want me to tell you?
28. Introduce people to a cool sport!
29. Show people how they can recycle.
30. Promote a movie!
31. Tell people how much you Love Squidoo!
32. Confess!
33. Share a Recipe.
34. Sell your art!
35. Promote your Blog!
36. Brag about a well deserved accomplishment!
37. Share your Ancient Greece Odyssey.
38. Show people how to have some outdoor summer fun!
39. Share your quest for a greener life.
40. Tell people I mog di narrisch gern.
41. Educate people about Making Every Freshwater Aquarium: The Best Freshwater Aquarium Ever!
42. Start a stylish new Trend!
43. Tell people your Claim To Fame!
44. Invite people to join your Poll!
45. Bring back a retro look!
46. Offer your Squidoo Services.
47. Promote you book.
48. Share your hobby.
49. Share some ideas!
50. Invite people to follow you on Twitter!
51. Bonus Tip - Let people know who you'd like to win on American Idol!

Learn from My Facebook Experience, apply the Techniques, do Good, and make money every step of the way!

While my South Park-esque picture (on your left) is reserved strictly for online message board, and forum, usage, Facebook has grown to become one of my more 'professional' outlets: bearing a similar personal picture like my Squidoo Lenses (on your right). Amidst the well-thought out 'attempts' at humor, this Squidoo Lens is about My Facebook Experience, and will be written in order to accomplish a truly unique feet.

My character is clearly salivating, and, for good reason. Either it's because of this outdated underestimate of a pie graph, the ongoing open invitation to promote your Squidoo Lens on this lens, my delectable Chocolate-Covered Strawberries or......

He knows just the wealth of information that this Squidoo Lens contains, and, he knows that, if you so choose to read further, that you may find yourself holistically enlightened with a variety of ideas, and techniques, that you can apply to get the most out of your Facebook experience, as well as, maybe even make some money along the way. (With the economy the way it is, who couldn't use a little extra cash in their pockets?) Government bailouts are reserved for those who are too big and influential to fail, so, unless you are sitting pretty on billions of dollars, this Squidoo lens will teach you just how you can utilize Facebook to benefit you (and, others, as well, but, we'll talk about that later!) Conveniently, popcorn and soda are waiting for you just a few modules down!

Although, I admit, Facebook has intentionally limited it's functionality in certain arenas, there are STILL little things that you can do to exploit their platform's functionality, to it's fullest, without violating any of their Terms of Service (TOS). Unlike many websites, this Squidoo Lens won't tease you, all the way to the end, only to offer you an E-book excessively priced over $50 . IF you commit to reading this Squidoo Lens, to the very end, I promise you that you'll leave with a variety of quality ideas and techniques that you can apply, on your own, to make the most ($$$) of your Facebook Experience!

Because of the massive amount of information available to us, I will intentionally branch several sections of this Squidoo Lens, into other Lenses, in order to cover all of this material. As you read through this Lens, feel free to visit my other, complementary lenses, as well. Each of those lenses will further expound upon topics that I deem so important that they require an entirely new Lens in order to adequately explain in detail.

Skip-to: Funny Status Update #1, Funny Status Update #2, Funny Status Update #3
Skip-to: Promote one of your own Squidoo Lenses, on this Squidoo Lens!

To all visitors: While you read the massive amount of content, in this lens, feel free to view the lenses of others, as well. Also, Create a Squidoo Lens about any aspect of Facebook, contact me, and I will LINK to your lens from this Squidoo Lens! This lens receives quite a few daily visitors, so this is a tremendous opportunity for those who have been around Squidoo for awhile, or for those who are just starting out. ENJOY!

Myspace Proxies

New Proxy Sites Updated on a weekly basis

Datinghidden.info Myspace Anonymous Proxy Surfing

Browse the internet securely using Surfinghidden.info . You can unblock popular social networking sites such as MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, YouTube, Orkut, Friendster and many other sites. Feel free to browse 24/7 and don't forget to tell your friends!

Surfingunitedstates.info Myspace Anonymous Proxy Surfing

Browse the internet securely using Hidebooks.info. You can unblock popular social networking sites such as MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, YouTube, Orkut, Friendster and many other sites. Feel free to browse 24/7 and don't forget to tell your friends!

Viddivision.com Myspace Anonymous Proxy Surfing

Browse the internet securely using Viddivision.com . You can unblock popular social networking sites such as MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, YouTube, Orkut, Friendster and many other sites. Feel free to browse 24/7 and don't forget to tell your friends!

Mojoyoyo.com Anonymous Web Proxy Surfing

Browse the internet securely using Mojoyoyo.com . You can unblock popular social networking sites such as MySpace, Bebo, Ebay, Facebook, YouTube, Orkut, Friendster and many other sites. Feel free to browse 24/7 and don't forget to tell your friends!

Biganimes.com Anonymous Web Proxy Surfing

A really fast myspace proxy to unblock myspace from school. Unblocks myspace and all other sites. Use our Myspace proxies to surf anonymously !

Godness.info Web Based Proxy Surfing

Browse the internet securely using Godness.info . You can unblock popular social networking sites such as MySpace, Bebo, Ebay, Facebook, YouTube, Orkut, Friendster and many other sites.

HIDEUP.INFO MYSPACE PROXY

Browse the internet securely using HIDEUP.INFO and unblock popular social networking sites such as MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, YouTube, Orkut, Friendster and many other sites.

New Proxies

Whenever you surf the internet your ip address is being logged by
every website you visit. A simple check of web logs will show the ip
address of everyone that visited a particular website. These logs can
be kept for years, and can send a trace back to you! It's not a matter
of just covering your tracks as most of us have nothing to hide, it's
a matter of *privacy*. Your right to privacy is being compromised when
browsing without a proxy.

Hispazero.com Myspace Proxy Surfing

Proxies for myspace, Access blocked sites like myspace using this website unblocker.

Proxies For Myspace

Browse the internet securely using Protectionauto.com . You can unblock popular social networking sites such as MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, YouTube, Orkut, Friendster and many other sites. Feel free to browse 24/7 and don't forget to tell your friends!

Humorspiked.com Myspace Proxy

Browse the internet securely using myspace proxies, use Humorspiked.com and Feel free to browse anonymously 24/7 and don't forget to tell your friends!

Proxies For Myspace

Proxies For Myspace blog with the latest updated proxies , updated on a daily basis. Promote your proxies also for Free and Join our Google Groups for fresh daily proxies.

HIDEBIZ.INFO NEW PROXY FOR MYSPACE

Browse the internet securely using HIDEBIZ.INFO . You can unblock popular social networking sites such as MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, YouTube, Orkut, Friendster and many other sites.

Myspace Proxies

Myspace Proxies updated proxy website to surf anonimously from school or work.

Hitnow.us Orkut Proxy

Browse the internet securely using HITNOW.US . You can unblock popular social networking sites such as MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, YouTube, Orkut, Friendster and many other sites.

HIDESPEED.INFO New Proxy for Youtube

HIDESPEED.INFO You can unblock popular social networking sites such as MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, YouTube, Orkut, Friendster and many other sites.

SURFDOCTOR.INFO - Fast Web Proxy

SURFDOCTOR.INFO Fast Web Proxy : Browse the internet without having to deal with annoying network restrictions. Our systems will retrieve your requested website and present it to you.

HIDEPOD.INFO - Free Web Proxy

HIDEPOD.INFO Free Web Proxy : Browse the internet without having to deal with annoying network restrictions. Our systems will retrieve your requested website and present it to you. This means that your online identity will remain hidden.

HIDDENHANDS.INFO - Free Web Proxy

HIDDENHANDS.INFO Free Web Proxy : Browse the internet without having to deal with annoying network restrictions. Our systems will retrieve your requested website and present it to you. This means that your online identity will remain hidden.

MAGICSURF.INFO Unblocker Proxy Surfing

MAGICSURF.INFO : Proxies for myspace, Access blocked sites like myspace using this website unblocker.

SURFISH.INFO Unblocker Proxy Surfing

SURFISH.INFO : Proxies for myspace, Access blocked sites like myspace using this website unblocker.

HIDETRAVEL.INFO Bypass Proxy Surfing

HIDETRAVEL.INFO : Proxies for myspace, Access blocked sites like myspace using this website unblocker.

Myspace Proxies: Surf Myspace Anonymously

Let's face it there are millions of people who are members of the number one social networking website, Myspace. The members vary from teens, working men and women, to business people and even those who are in their early 40's or 50's. With the variety of members of Myspace and for a free membership, no wonder it became a big hit to a lot of people worldwide.

A very large number but comes with a very alarming surprise. Myspace is the den of numerous scammers, predators, dangerous people and fraudulent or fake profiles trying out to project to be someone when they are not.

If you are a member of this famous social networking site, you must be cautious enough and be aware that a lot of people are there lurking into each of the profiles trying to get their next prey. But are you still confused on how to protect yourself?

There is one thing that you can do, that is using Myspace proxies. There are lot of these people who will try to hack you down through recognizing and knowing your IP address.

IP address is like a home address, it is where you can be tracked down and BINGO! You are just seconds away from their next move to make you as their prey. But what can just a normal person like you with no knowledge of the technology and its advancement do to shield yourself from the danger of showing off your IP address to the public?

Worry no more, with the use of proxies for myspace, you can hide yourself from the world and these dangerous people might hack the IP address you are using but what they view and trying to hack down is the proxy address that you are using.

They will never have the chance to track down your real IP address.

Myspace Anonymous Proxy Surfing

With Myspace proxies, you are safe to surf the internet and especially browse your favorite site, Myspace. Now you can shield yourself from those people who are snorkeling around for their next prey or victim.

Be a victim no more and log on to Myspace with a free spirit and no fear through the use Myspace proxies. It is not easy to choose what proxy to use, from the many proxies that are available on the internet.

But there is one website that can help you out in making your choice, Myspace Anonymous Proxy Surfing.

You can never go wrong with Myspace Anonymous Proxy Surfing . You can surf the internet with at ease and be updated with the latest on privacy issues and much more. The good thing about it, you can use this site for free.

No shelling out money from your pocket. You can now shield and protect yourself when surfing the internet especially Myspace for free. Nothing can get even better.

So next time, you will surf Myspace, be sure to use one of the available Myspace proxies to protect yourself from all the dangers that are present when your IP address is visible to the public.