False Positives: 01/11/2004

I qualify

Tomcat Tutorial: HelloWorld for Complete Fools ;-) [English]

Seems to be very similar to Java(TM) Boutique - The Power of Three - Eclipse, Tomcat, and Struts

Yet Another Thing For Ian to Understand (YATFITU)

Hibernate Your Data by Davor Cengija. Hibernate can persist any kind of Java object, manipulate a hierarchy of objects, handle collections, and work with transactions. Davor Cengija shows you how.

Quite a good piece. A little SQL 101, show you some things that Can Go Wrong (CGW, happens to me a dozen times a day). I don't know why I didn't link this the first time I read it (Blogger fatigue?).

There is also this SQL 201 piece (allways good for reference) The Effective Use of Joins in Select Statements by Satya Komatineni -- A join construct helps you effectively use select statements to mine relational databases. This article examines syntax, surprises, and rules of thumb for the use of joins.

And in a related, all things DB theme Ten MySQL Best Practices : 1. Set a password for the "root" user and then rename the user, 2. Hide MySQL from the Internet, 3. Protect the MySQL installation directory from access by other users, 4. Don't store binary data in MySQL, 5. Stick to ANSI SQL, 6. Create your own sequence generation scheme, 7. Do not mix display code and database code, 8. Normalize with zeal, denormalize sparingly, 9. Use connection pooling in Web servers and application servers, 10. Tune your queries with EXPLAIN SELECT.

Thoughts on Blogging The Market

Via Blogging Roller: Newsfeed Syndication, E-mail to weblog gateway, Notification of comments, Full text search, Archive browser, Weblog aggregator, Wiki integration.

Troll XP

Behind the scenes at Microsoft.

Eric's Kitchen

Via Chanpon Eric's Kitchen, The Breakaway Japanese Kitchen, is a modernist/contemporary interpretation of Japanese food.

The Observer | Focus | Forget black, forget white. EA is what's hot

Mindblender or How to lose weigth via the internet

Via Wired 12.01: "Mindblender"

Japanese psychologist Akiyoshi Kitaoka presents more than 120 such optical illusions in his books .

Professor Tetris , unfolded

Canadian scientist Dr. Erik Demaine, about whom I blogged in November (2003) gets mentioned in January 2004's Wired

What does VOIP get you?

As part of my ongoing "Year of VOIP" rant, I submit Tim Bray's Telephony R.I.P.? or "Video conferencing for free"/"Videophone's for the Rest of us".

also extremetech has this on webcam's :The $40 Device You Didn't Know You Needed

And Wired has "Why Your Next Phone Call May Be Online, which means its mainstream geek. (Now only the PCweek article is missing)

Googling by the numbers

via InfoWorld: Google adds number search tool

Not every one is aware of this, and unfortunalty many of these tricks/Tips/Hacks only work for USA based information, but you can search for

A phone number like (530) 756-0236 and get a Name and a map.

UPS, FedEX or U.S. Postal Service tracking numbers (untested)

Patents numbers Like this for patent 5159513

(FAA) airline registration number , like this for Air Canada Flight 716

You can get Definitions (words and abbreviations) by typing : "What is Word" like this what is FBO

Bar codes (I have yet to test this)

check the weather at a particular airport by entering the airport's three-letter code and the word "airport". (USA only, this it links to the FAA like this for LGA, New York LaGuardia International Airport

USA zip codes link to maps, like this one Zip code 10242

Many of these have been there for some time, but where not well known. It also seems to have problems with some new/change zip codes and phone numbers.

Update (jan 17th) : via boingboing to Google Blog
an example of UPC codes, e.g. 073333531084 or 036000250015, bring up some information about the product.
and Google does Vehicle ID (VIN) numbers, e.g. JH4NA1157MT001832, link to a CARFAX report on what kind of car and its status.

'UName' naming standard. Patent pending

"Pick a word. Now, imagine a potentially meaningful adjective or other nebbish modifier, select the first letter, and append this to either the beginning or the end of the noun you originally chose.

Slashdot | Why Such Unimaginative Nomenclature?