Jonathan Hedrén Designer, developer, photographer and musician
Some of the new features I look forward to use:
Now I’ll just have to wait for my hosting providers to upgrade to 5.3.0…
Google App Engine now supports Java. The environment contains:
…a Java 6 JVM, a Java Servlets interface, and support for standard interfaces to the App Engine scalable datastore and services, such as JDO, JPA, JavaMail, and JCache.
There is also a Google Plugin for Eclipse available.
Check out the Getting Started: Java guide for a simple tutorial on how to develop and deploy a Java project on Google App Engine or read more on the Google App Engine blog.
Today it was announced that Magento 1.3.0 was released. Most interesting in this major release is the claimed performance improvement – early tests and benchmarks shows up to 40% performance increase in page loads and memory usage. I haven’t confirmed these numbers, but I’m glad to see that the Magento team still is concerned about performance and is trying to do something about it.
Check out the official blog post @ http://www.magentocommerce.com/blog/comments/magento-version-130-is-now-available/
Textpattern releases usually occur once every 6-12 months or so. This is obviously an exception – I cite the official blog post:
Textpattern 4.0.8 is a maintenance release fixing some bugs and ironing out a few glitches which sneaked in during the introduction of new features in our previous release.
Read more about the fixes @ http://textpattern.com/weblog/332/textpattern-cms-408-released.
I’ve been a happy Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 owner for a couple of months. It is running Windows Mobile 6.1 (with all it’s pro’s and con’s). Windows Mobile comes packed with a lot of useful apps but it is missing a useful dictaphone app. A dictaphone is very useful to record guitar riffs and musical ideas in general, so I went on a hunt for one on the Internet.
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Yep, a new version (4.0.7) of my favourite blog/CMS software, Textpattern, has been released to the public. I’ve been running a lot of sites on Textpattern for the last 3-4 years and I still think it is the best CMS software to use for small to medium sized web sites (jonathanhedren.com is running on it aswell).
I think the most interesting new features in version 4.0.7 are unlimited nesting of template tags and that many list tags can take forms and/or contained markup.
Read more at the official announcement
Today I stumbled upon a great freeware VST-plugin: Preamp Emulator. It is basically a tube preamp emulator that creates that warm and rich sound that you expect from a tube amplifier. I was very impressed with what this little plugin accomplished and will probably use it a lot in my projects.
Go to the developers web site to download and try it out.
Yep, two weeks ago (September 27, 2008) my son was born. His name will be Julian.
I’m glad he’s finally here :)
I’ve long been a phpMyAdmin user. Even though I’m quite confident working with MySQL via the command line client, a graphical interface just makes the workflow faster. A GUI also makes it easier to overlook your databases, tables and table data. So phpMyAdmin has been perfect. It has now found a conqueror though: SQL Buddy (found via theDailyApp). SQL Buddy is a free, open source application that basically offers the same functionality as phpMyAdmin, but SQL Buddy comes with a slicker GUI than phpMyAdmin, and an extremely easy setup routine (just unzip the files in a folder on your web server, point your browser to the folder, login and go!). So farewell phpMyAdmin, you’ve been overpowered, and welcome, SQL Buddy!
Continued...Whenever I’m about to do a mid-size or large project I prefer using some type of wireframing and/or prototyping software. I like wireframes a lot because they take just a fraction of time to do compared to full designs. Wireframes are also easy to talk abount with clients and fellow workers without them making fuss about design elements. Most people do understand that wireframes are not the finished product because they’re so simple. That usually makes it easier for all involved parts to focus on things like usability, functionality and basic layout.
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