- Software War Pits Oracle vs Google - More background on what will prove to be a very interesting case.
- Google Bails on Oracle/Sun Java One Conference - A natural, but unfortunate, reaction.
- YouTube eyes pay-per-view films - I'm kind of surprised it has taken this long.
- US Open Tennis - Starts today, for what is usually a great two weeks of tennis.
Monday, August 30, 2010
links for 2010-08-30: Background on Oracle vs Google; Google won't be at JavaOne; YouTube movies?; US Open tennis starts today
Friday, August 27, 2010
links for 2010-08-27: Apple going after jailbreakers; Google integrates voice into Gmail; Happy Birthday EC2; QWERTY Face-off
- To jailbreak or not to jailbreak: That shouldn't be Apple's decision - I'm sure glad Apple is so passionate about protecting me from myself.
- Call phones from Gmail - A nice feature and integration of Google Voice into Gmail. It appears they are going after Skype at least in part with this one. But it appears Google Apps users don't get it, at least yet.
- Happy 4th Birthday Amazon EC2 - It is amazing how far things have come in 4 years.
- Phone QWERTY Face-off - They aren't a fan of the Droid 2.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Trying out Liferay 6 CE
As part of some work I'm doing I've been working with Joomla for a corporate web-site and it works great, but I wanted to see what other Content Management Systems had to offer and so decided to give Liferay a spin.
Liferay is launching version 6 Enterprise Edition in September, but thanks to being in open-source the Community Edition is available now. I grabbed the Tomcat bundle of version 6.0.5 CE and got started.
Making bundles available (there are bundles for other containers including GlassFish, JBoss, Jetty, etc.) makes installation a snap. Just download, unzip and run the startup script. On my laptop, after a bit over a minute I had a running Liferay installation.
Thanks to a few pointers and instructions from Paul Hinz, I was off and running configuring Liferay and creating some pages. Since I was primarily interested in creating a web-site, after trying some basics, I went to the Web Content Management section to give its capabilities a spin.
This is not intended to be a comparison with Joomla, but right away there was a different paradigm. Rather than navigate an administrative interface to create pages, content, and lay things out, with Liferay one simply logs in, navigates the site, and a few extra controls are available to do all the edits you need. This is probably a personal preference item but I like the Liferay approach better.
For now, I'm simply using the default Liferay theme, although I decided I didn't like the breadcrumbs it had so went in and hacked that out of the template. I'll have to take a look at create templates properly in the future.
Liferay is a portal, not just a CMS, so there are a host of portlets and components you can add to your pages. But even for just building a web-site the default theme has nice pull down menus, a configurable navigation portlet, and a simple and convenient way to add new pages and content. Want to add a page? Click a button to manage the page, click the Children tab, enter a name for the new page, and that's it.
Adding content to a page is just as easy. Open the Add pull down menu, pick the component to add and position it on the page. When creating a web-site, you'll usually be adding the Web Content Display component. Once added, you can either link to and edit existing content to display, or create new content in a nice editor.
But even when creating "just" a web-site, you can add other components like wikis and blogs, although my installation gave me errors when trying to post new content to either. I'll have to visit the forums to see if it is a known issue.
As far as resources, being a Java EE app Liferay is somewhat hungry. Running on Linux, with the use above creating a web-site the Java process is using about 400 MB of RAM. It also isn't terribly speedy starting up, but that may be more of a Tomcat issue. On my old slow Linux server (dual 450 MHz Pentium), it takes a whopping 6 minutes to start. But on a dual core MacBook Pro it takes about 80 seconds.
To compare performance and memory, I did grab the GlassFish bundle and start it up, but ran into a few issues. First, the bundle didn't have the right permissions on some scripts and then once started, Liferay doesn't appear to be installed or working as all I get is a GlassFish "your server is running" page. I'd pursue it more but am fine with using Tomcat.
Stay tuned, I'll share more and perhaps will have a live site to point you to soon.
Liferay is launching version 6 Enterprise Edition in September, but thanks to being in open-source the Community Edition is available now. I grabbed the Tomcat bundle of version 6.0.5 CE and got started.
Making bundles available (there are bundles for other containers including GlassFish, JBoss, Jetty, etc.) makes installation a snap. Just download, unzip and run the startup script. On my laptop, after a bit over a minute I had a running Liferay installation.
Thanks to a few pointers and instructions from Paul Hinz, I was off and running configuring Liferay and creating some pages. Since I was primarily interested in creating a web-site, after trying some basics, I went to the Web Content Management section to give its capabilities a spin.
This is not intended to be a comparison with Joomla, but right away there was a different paradigm. Rather than navigate an administrative interface to create pages, content, and lay things out, with Liferay one simply logs in, navigates the site, and a few extra controls are available to do all the edits you need. This is probably a personal preference item but I like the Liferay approach better.
For now, I'm simply using the default Liferay theme, although I decided I didn't like the breadcrumbs it had so went in and hacked that out of the template. I'll have to take a look at create templates properly in the future.
Liferay is a portal, not just a CMS, so there are a host of portlets and components you can add to your pages. But even for just building a web-site the default theme has nice pull down menus, a configurable navigation portlet, and a simple and convenient way to add new pages and content. Want to add a page? Click a button to manage the page, click the Children tab, enter a name for the new page, and that's it.
Adding content to a page is just as easy. Open the Add pull down menu, pick the component to add and position it on the page. When creating a web-site, you'll usually be adding the Web Content Display component. Once added, you can either link to and edit existing content to display, or create new content in a nice editor.
But even when creating "just" a web-site, you can add other components like wikis and blogs, although my installation gave me errors when trying to post new content to either. I'll have to visit the forums to see if it is a known issue.
As far as resources, being a Java EE app Liferay is somewhat hungry. Running on Linux, with the use above creating a web-site the Java process is using about 400 MB of RAM. It also isn't terribly speedy starting up, but that may be more of a Tomcat issue. On my old slow Linux server (dual 450 MHz Pentium), it takes a whopping 6 minutes to start. But on a dual core MacBook Pro it takes about 80 seconds.
To compare performance and memory, I did grab the GlassFish bundle and start it up, but ran into a few issues. First, the bundle didn't have the right permissions on some scripts and then once started, Liferay doesn't appear to be installed or working as all I get is a GlassFish "your server is running" page. I'd pursue it more but am fine with using Tomcat.
Stay tuned, I'll share more and perhaps will have a live site to point you to soon.
Friday, August 20, 2010
links for 2010-08-20: Ellison to hire Hurd?; Laptop reliability survey; Google thwarted by California; Oracle vs Google on Java; Cloud data offers intelligence; Ubuntu advantages over Windows and OS X
- Mark Hurd to Oracle? Don't be surprised - An interesting idea.
- Acer makes the shoddiest laptops, say IT professionals - From those they surveyed, I'd agree Acer is at the bottom of the list. It is interesting to see HP and Dell with high percentages in both the best and worse categories.
- Google accuses California of rigging bidding process for e-mail contract - I personally find Google's labels and search preferable to traditional e-mail clients. Let's hope California didn't have a closed mind on the subject.
- Charles Nutter's thoughts on Oracle vs Google - A great read if you have the time. If you don't, Stephen O'Grady's thoughts are good as well (and shorter).
- Intuit: Small businesses slow hiring; increase pay and hours worked - Another great example of how Cloud based services (Intuit's Online Payroll service) offer an opportunity to use volumes of data to offer intelligence.
- Ubuntu's two big advantages over Windows and Mac - Jason makes very good points. I doubt it is going to cause a major shift to Ubuntu though...
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
links for 2010-08-17: Future of JavaFX; OpenSolaris is dead
- Enterprise Applications are Good Candidates for Using JavaFX - Highlights the pros/cons of JavaFX and gives it 6-12 months to address the cons.
- Oracle apparently shuts doors on OpenSolaris - It isn't a surprise, but is unfortunate. With source code only making it to the community after the commercial Solaris is released, it appears Solaris is now headed for "Visible Source", not open source. Some of the comments are telling; "Here I was just getting started with OpenSolaris for my home server because of ZFS and all the wonderful features it has. I had figured if I can make it work at home, I would try to bring it in to the company. Now that OpenSolaris is dead and it looks like Solaris is encumbered with support licenses I don’t know how easy it will be to have them switch."
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