Matt Bowcock // mbowcock.com

Google announced it intends to release its own open source web browser called Chrome on Tuesday (Sept. 2).  The announcement came after Google accidently posted a comic book detailing the plans.  You can view the comic book on Google Books.  I wonder how the name came about since Google has been a big supporter of Firefox and Firefox already uses a technology called Chrome?

Theres a link in the comic book to – www.google.com/chrome – that doesn’t appear to work right now but I assume it will on Tuesday.  Looks like the website might actually be – gears.google.com/chrome – although I don’t think it will be available until after a 2PM Eastern webcast from Google.

In searching for a place to download Chrome I stumbled on a post at zwadia.com – Assessing Google Chrome – that I found interesting.

Although the Android hasn’t been released yet Google is working on the details of a marketplace to support 3rd party applications for the platform.  According to a post on the Android Developers Blog - devices will initially have a beta version of the market where users will be able to find free apps.  A future update will allow for paid content/applications.

This post is a work in progress and will be expanded on in the future.

I work with developers, DBAs, etc. all the time who have no practical knowledge of computer networking. I’m going to try to shed a little light on the magic that happens behind the scenes. Initially this will be really basic but will become more technical.

A computer network can be broken up into two distinct pieces – the edge and the core. The network edge is made of things we are all familiar with – client PCs, servers, network attached storage, etc. The network core is what connects the systems on the edge to each other. The core is made up of routers, switches, hubs, etc.

Network Edge

Systems on the edge are sometimes referred to as hosts and hosts can be further broken down into clients and servers. Clients are typically desktop PCs, thin clients, IP enabled phones and servers are typically more powerful systems such as web & database servers. In general software terms – a client is a program running on one edge system that requests a service from a program running on another edge system. So – essentially one computer requests a service from another computer- AKA Client/Server architecture.

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I guess I missed the big news yesterday but many didn’t – Comcast is implementing a 250GB cap on bandwidth per month – I assume for residential customers.  My first response is WTF? I’m already paying $50/month for Internet access and they might charge me more?  Although – realistically I probably come nowhere near 250GB usage per month.  But for the money I would rather the availability be there if I needed it – I guess theres always Fios which is coming to my area soon.  As far as I can tell Verizon doesn’t put any caps on bandwidth usage.

Plus Comcast supports enhanced P2P.

I just got Opera Mini 3 installed on my ocean and wanted try the functionality with Wordpress. The stock browser can’t handle logging into wordpress so I was doubtful but so far so good. I’ll need to experiment some more but I’m impressed so far.

I used Matlab quite a bit in engineering school and got used to having it available not only for math but for its programming ability. After graduating there were times I wished I had access to Matlab but didn’t couldn’t afford the commercial license so I looked for open source/free software with similar capabilities and was really surprised to find some great software.

GNU Octave – Similar functionality and programmability of Matlab. Programs written in Octave can be run in Matlab if they are written with that ability in mind.

FreeMat – Another app similar to Matlab – I personally used this one more than Octave – not for any particular reason I just liked it. The programming language syntax is similar to Matlab.

TechCrunch asks - Microsoft Tafiti is Beautiful, But Will Anyone Use It?  The answer is NO.

I was playing with Tafiti doing random searches, storing stuff to the search “shelf”, playing with the tree view and I decided to show my wife – if only for the wow factor.  She was completely unimpressed.  She didn’t care about the sleek look, or the cool technology behind the scenes, it just seemed to obscure her search results.  I think at this point most users are so used to search results being simple - getting them to use anything new would be difficult. 

I just updated my About page – but instead of posting the same information here I will just point you to the page if your interested.  About Page

Unitarian Church Statue

Unitarian Church Gargoyle

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I mentioned in my previous post that I was testing some software for Fenway Forum - well I played with bbpress and while I liked it I ended up deleting it and just installing wordpress.  I figure its so hard to get a true forum to critical mass where it is somewhat self sustaining – that I would be better served creating posts in wordpress.  If I need to in the future I can always add bbpress and integrate with wordpress.

I also had the thought of allowing anyone to register in wordpress and give new members a “contributor” role.  This would allow them to contribute new posts – but they would need to be approved by an admin (me).  This would allow users to create new posts and other uses to post comments just like “true” forum apps – all whithin the comfort of wordpress.  We’ll see how it goes.