Personalize your Google homepage

I'm not sure when this was launched by Google, since they have a tendency to sneak up on the unsuspecting public and drop new products and services on our laps, but I have been using this for quite some time and I must say it is very useful.

You can actually personalize your Google home page. So instead of getting a plain vanilla Google page with the search box, you add "portlets" onto your page, available portlets are newfeeds from most major media new outlets, Gmail. Recently, Google has even released an API so keen programmers can also create their own little portlets or widgets.

How do you do it? Well, first get a Google account and to go to http://www.google.com/ig. Then just sign in and add the content that you want. Easy!

If you don't have a Gmail account and if you want one, drop me an email at ynchan at gmail dot com

2005 Year in Review: Java Technology

First off, I have to admit that I have a certain soft spot in my heart for Java technology . Its most likely due to Java being THE programming language that I embraced back in my university days, and it was probably the only one I could readily grasp. I was hopeless in Visual Basic and barely survived C. Of course, having Michael Kölling (@ Mik) as our Java lecturer helped heaps! *Shameless plug: Mik created BlueJ, an IDE tool for teaching of Java. I still reckon its the best and coolest. End plug*

So yes, Java is very much what I've been involved in but unfortunately, I've been falling a bit behind on the technology and try as I might to read and keep up with what's going on, its just not the same as getting my hands dirty. Be that as it may, I'll try to highlight some events in the Java ecosystem which stood out in 2005.

Spring and Hibernate
In the absence of any major release of Java APIs from Sun, I reckon that the open source projects Spring and Hibernate drew the most attention. Spring started out as a lightweight IoC container. Now, there are several other sub-project "springing" up, including Spring Web Flow, which looks promising. Java application server big boy, BEA, has even embraced Spring and have committed to support Spring based applications. In fact, there are lots of articles on BEA dev2dev with regards to Spring and other open source projects. Hibernate adoption continues to climb in 2005 and I think 2006 will be no different. In fact, the combination of Spring-Hibernate J2EE applications is probably the most popular now.

Eclipse
Eclipse continues to remain as the most popular Java IDE of choice. Most recently Eclipse has released WebTools Project (WTP) plugin for developing Web-based J2EE applications. There are several other promising projects and plugins such Business Intelligence & Reporting Tools (BIRT) plugin in the pipeline. BEA has also announced that the next version of its IDE, WebLogic Workshop will be built on the Eclipse framework. Having said that, Sun has released several version of its IDE, Java Studio Creator and Java Studio Enterprise, that rivals Eclipse. All in all, this competition can only be good for the industry as a whole.

AJAX
OK, not strictly Java, but AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is one of the technology highlights of 2005. As the name suggest, it is a combination of JavaScript and XML. Not exactly groundbreaking stuff, but really an innovative way of combining several existing technologies and changing the way the Web application works.

What's in store?
Major releases of Java SE, codenamed Mustang, and Java EE are expected in 2006. Yes, you read right. Sun is re-branding the Java platform. The three different editions of Java will be known as Java SE, Java EE and Java ME.

2006 is upon us!

Wow...before you even realise it, 2005 is no more and 2006 is here! What a year its been! In the world of technology, innovations has continued to thrive in the Java ecosystem, Apple continues to astound with the iPod product family.

In english football, Chelsea continues to steamroll opponents (and bore us to tears) with their brand of 'effective' football, while Manchester United after some missteps seem to pick up some momentum. On the local sporting front, Nicol David was crowned world no. 1 in squash.

Many events have shaken the world in 2005, from wars to assasinations to debt relief for Africa.

And of course, here in Malaysia, we've had scandals, haze problems, and university foul ups!

Once I consolidate my thoughts, I'll get around to putting in a Year in Review of sorts and hopefully get to post some pictures from India.

Till then Happy 2006.