Spike:Blogs

SpikeSource Employee Blogs

These are the most recent blog posts from employees of SpikeSource:

SpikeSource Employee Blogs

Alternate SpikeSource Employee Blogs

Planet Spike

Calvin Austin: JavaOne - Hits and misses
This years JavaOne was a not to be missed event. Here are my views on how the conference has changed.

Calvin Austin: Applets re-birth, what happened?
Dion has been blogging about the re-birth of Applets, but how did things end up this way?
Calvin Austin: javascript remote diff/merge tool
Update of the open source project JSBlend tool now handles remote diff and merges
Calvin Austin: Pavarotti and I - a true hero
I was very sad to see the news about Pavarotti's death. He was a true inspiration, an amazing tenor and larger than life. I met him briefly 25 years ago.. here is how
Calvin Austin: JAVA stock ticker change - what's next?
SUNW ticker = JAVA, what's next!
Calvin Austin: Dirty secrets of computer engineering
Why no-one really wants software updates and what we can do about it.
Ed Espino: My trip to India - Part 12
For the most part, I normally sleep 4 or 5 hours a night during theweek. I've been like this for many years. On this trip, I'm prettysure it is playing to my advantage. When I do put my mind to it, Ireally don't have trouble sleepin
Ed Espino: My trip to India - Part 11
Honking ... Honking ... short lived honks ... a bunch of short livedhonks fill the air.For an airport exit area, the place is alive. The driver instructs meto wait for him at the side of the curb. I stand there wondering what I'll notice
Ed Espino: My trip to India - Part 10
We land on time (10:40 pm) in Bangalore. Thus far, the trip is good.I have rested. I have given thought to the importance of my wife andchildren. I have ventured out into an unknown city.I got lost and I found my way to India. ...My
Ed Espino: My trip to India - Part 9
Boeing 777-300/Jubilee3hrs 40mins to Bangalore.I have a window seat in the back. Only two seats. Me and an older(60+ year old) woman. I don't think she speaks English. My luckytravelling day. ...I like this chronicling my jour
Ed Espino: My trip to India - Part 8
I start walking back to SUNTEC. Something is wrong! I have walkedone block in the wrong direction. I stop. I look at my map and walkback. I pass the front of the Raffles Hotel. A magnificent old worldcolonial europ
Ed Espino: My trip to India - Part 7
Jennie - My wife, My Life, My soul mate. My love for you is strong,strong. I would love to show you how strong you are. Take you aroundthe world. There is so much out there to see and experience. Whenyou read this you ha
Ed Espino: My trip to India - Part 6
It's just under 4 hours to Singapore. I'm a little more then half wayto my destination - Southern India - Bangalore. Rain is coming down.The engine plays with the water on the runway. The take off is good.I see a United Parcel Servi
Ed Espino: My trip to India - Part 5
Hong Kong Airport - It was very good talking to Jennie andChristopher. We had just landed and we were preparing to disembark.I was trying to call home. It doesn't go through. My heart is heavy.And guess what? My phone rings ..
Ed Espino: My trip to India - Part 4
One more hour to Hong Kong. We are flying over the South China Sea.I know of great rivers which flow into this body of water. ThePhilippine islands are about an hour south west of my current position.... Current time: at home:
Calvin Austin: Java on Fiesty Ubuntu - will anyone notice?
Java is now part of the Ubuntu Feisty Fawn repositories but will the average user or developer even notice?

Mugunth Subramanian: TamilKey 0.3 (Thamizh Visai) released.
TamilKey or ThamizhVisai(as its called in tamil) is an extension for typing tamil inside firefox,thunderbird & chatzilla. Its one of the projects initiated and being maintained by a group tamil freesoftware volunteers under thamizha.com.

Tamilkey version 0.3 was released on 12 Dec 2006 and release anouncement was made by our team member Gopi in freetamilcomputing list.

This release has following new features:
1. Support for Bamini and Typewriter keyboard layouts.
Bamini keyboard is popular among Srilankan Tamils and Typewriter keyboard is popular among the Tamil Nadu tamils.

2. User Shortcut option - Now users can set their own shortcuts for various keyboard settings and for switching from english to tamil typing.

3. And also many bugs were fixed in this release.

Almost all the development work related to this version 0.3 was done by Gopi. And also Freetamilcomputing list members Ravi, Thi.Va., Sethu contributed to this release greatly by testing this release and finding bugs.

This can be downloaded from the following locations:
http://tamilkey.mozdev.org/installation.html
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2994/
Mugunth Subramanian: My home town in news!
Recently my home town Namakkal - became first town in India to get ISO 14001 certification. I am really proud about this.
http://www.hindu.com/mag/2006/04/09/stories/2006040900210400.htm

I hope other cities in India too follow Namakkal and become clean and efficiently managed cities.

Calvin Austin: The unwritten story of open source java
I'm over the moon that Sun has stepped up to deliver open source Java. But why did it take so long? What events led up to this historic day?

Mugunth Subramanian: 'Crocodile Hunter' Steve Irwin Killed
Just saw this news in BBC site http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5311298.stm
I used to watch with awe Steve Irwin's wildlife programs in TV. I feel sad about his sudden death.
Mugunth Subramanian: SumatraPDF viewer - A light weight PDF reader
In my windows machine, I havent installed any PDF reader since I was not using windows system often. Yesterday I came across a light weight PDF viewer for windows by name Sumatra PDF viewer. http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/

I liked it very much for the following reasons:
1. Its light weight compared to Adobe Acrobat reader.
2. It serves its purpose of showing the pdf files cleanly.
3. Its a freesoftware .

I have installed it and started using it as my primary and only PDF viewer.

Of cource it has few sortcomings too. Right now it doesnt have printing support. But I hope soon these features will be available since its a freesoftware. And by nature freesoftwares evolves thro community participation

Ed Espino: White Board Art - Coming to America - by Alex Cheung
Coming to America by Alex Cheung - White Board Art that started a Revolution!
Calvin Austin: What PHP needs to learn from Java
Why PHP finds it hard to dislodge Java from the Enterprise

Mugunth Subramanian: Updated tamil firerfox extensions
Last week I updated two of my firefox extensions.
1. Tamil language extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2989/ )
I had created a tamil language extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/512/) that works only on version 1.0.x . Even though I have updated this tamil extension to work in version 1.5 some time back, but could find time to updated the extension in addons.mozilla.org only last week.

2. Tamilkey extension:
Tamilkey is a utility to type tamil in firefox/thunderbird/chatzilla directly. Its now available at https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2994/
It was created by myself and released on Pongal day (14-01-2006) .
Later voice of wings joined and enhanced the utility by completely rewriting the code.

Tamilkey project website URL: http://tamilkey.mozdev.org

Mugunth Subramanian: Chennai in google earth
Google has released a new version (release 4 beta) of their google earth yesterday. Details of this release is here: http://earth.google.com/earth4.html

I am happy about this release for two reasons:
1. Google earth is available for Linux machines. So now I am able to install google earth in my linux laptop.
2. Google earth features my favorite place chennai (its also my home state capital). Its now possible to see more details(street level details) of chennai. Previously google earth used to show in detail only Bangalore, New Delhi, Bombay & Hydrabad cities in India. For some unknown reason chennai was left out by google. I am happy that atleast now google earth shows chennai in detail.

Following screen shot shows chennai's famous Anna Flyover in google earth.
Calvin Austin: Java and the Titanic
Not the Mythbusters or some Microsoft publicity stunt, the titanic was really here!
Calvin Austin: Javaone: w/images Java SE and Java EE keynote pt2
2nd half of the Java SE and Java EE keynote
Calvin Austin: Javaone: w/images Java SE and Java EE keynote pt1
Updates and pictures from Graham Hamilton, Bill Shannon and team
Calvin Austin: Javaone news highlights. Open Source Java
Keynote highlights. JBoss, Ubuntu and others
Calvin Austin: Javaone news: Java on Linux the real story
Making the Java license on Linux less restrictive is good but is it too little too late?
Vinay Srini: I can't believe Colbert had this kind of guts
Vinay Srini: phew! no quotas in private sector imposed.. for now?
Calvin Austin: Java: What's in a name
The real history behind the Java naming scheme
Calvin Austin: So you want to rewrite or re-factor your application
Give an engineer some code and one of the first things crossing through the mind of some engineers is, "Should I rewrite or re-factor that code?". The logic being that the new version will be ultimately be better in some way than the original. But it doesn't always work out that way..
Vinay Srini: Do you get a "Bless you" after you sneeze - what is behind that tradition?
Vinay Srini: Levitating Desktop Globes
Vinay Srini: Dr. Raj passed away today!
Ed Espino: White Board Art - Let's Play - by Alex Cheung
Let's Play by Alex Cheung - White Board Art that started a Revolution!
Ed Espino: Does the lonely feeling every go away?
Loosing one's father and brother leaves a huge hole in one's heart.
Mugunth Subramanian: A tamil transliteration pluggin for Gaim
Gaim is a popular opensource IM utility. I use Gaim to communicate with my friends using various protocols like Yahoo/MSN/IRC etc. It works both in Linux & Windows (also in BSD, MacOS X )

For typing tamil in any windows program, I use a keyboard driver software by name ekalappai (which is also created by me). But somehow ekalappai cannot be used with Gaim. It simply does not work. So far no time to debug this. So whenever I use Gaim in windows I type tamil text in notepad then copy & paste in Gaim and send it.

Now there is a solution to this problem. Anna University student Varun has created a plugin for Gaim transliterate english text typed in gaim message window to tamil.

You can read about this plugin in Varun's blog.

Congrats Varun !

Calvin Austin: If Java was a car
And is the delay of JDK 6.0 Mustang a good thing?

Mugunth Subramanian: Tamilkey - a firefox extension to type tamil.
I am happy to announce the release of tamilkey firefox extension on this Pongal day.

Using tamilkey firefox extension firefox users will be able to type tamil without need for any external programs like ekalappai.
Currently tamilnet99 and Anjal keyboard layouts are supported by tamilkey. I am planning to add more keyboard layouts in future.
Tamilkey can be downloaded from http://tamilkey.mozdev.org

Calvin Austin: Java wins programming language of the year
I've been patiently waiting to see the result of this index having followed it last year.

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This page was last modified 06:59, 21 August 2007.