Google in schnell

Wie Google bekannt gab, unterstützt der Suchmaschinenbetreiber ab sofort die Mozilla-Funktion "Link Prefetching", um Suchresultate in Mozilla und Firefox vorab zu laden und die Suche so zu beschleunigen. Dazu werden die besten Suchergebnisse aus Googles Ergebnisseite aus dem Internet geladen, noch bevor die betreffenden Links angeklickt wurden.

Grundsätzlich keine schlechte Idee, wobei Google sich nicht sicher sein zu scheint ob ihr Algorithmus zur Verhinderung des unnötigen Datenverkehrs funktioniert. Naja wenn jemand Modem benutzt, oder auf den traffic achten muss, kann er die Funktion im Browser ja deaktivieren.

Concurrent Programming Overview

J2SE 5.0 has added the java.util.concurrent package that provides standardized concurrency utilities. While the classes provided do not provide new functionality that couldn't be accomplished in the past, they are convenience classes designed to make development easier by providing high-quality implementations for data synchronization mechanisms. This package does for concurrent programming what the collection framework has done to data structures -- essentially freeing the developer from re-inventing the wheel with possibly incorrect and inefficient implementations.

rating comment: The article gives a great overview of the java.util.concurrent package and briefly explains what's possible with the different features of the new framework.

Thinlet Tutorial

Swing may be ubiquitous, but it can also be far too complex for many simpler tasks. Luckily, there's a tool called Thinlet that simplifies GUI development by defining GUIs in XML files. Part 1 of this series takes you through Thinlet's features, demonstrating why this is a very interesting and useful way to build a user interface.

Thoughts on Software market

Choice leads to quality, but higher standards of quality reduce choice over time. That leads to the vanishing middle: software projects increasingly consolidate into a few large projects, on one hand, and a few small, niche projects, on the other. Smaller projects can turn to transparency of their development processes as a way to gain traction.

Threading example

I've read a couple of articles about the new concurrency features introduced in Java 5, and it got my attention. There are a lot of new features, like thread pools, semaphores and a lot more. The most interesting and the most widely used feature, I think, is the Executor interface.
The Executor interface helps you seperate task submission from task execution. The java.util.concurrent package provides a couple of default implementations of the Executor interface, which allows you to submit tasks and which are then run by the Executor implementation. Tasks can be good old Runnables or new Callables.
Overall, I think the new concurrency utilities are very powerful and make programmers life easier!

I made a small example using a couple of new concurrency features. For further details, check the readme file that comes along with my example. It is available through bittorrent and my download site.

Boxing with Java 5

J2SE 5.0's autoboxing feature liberates you from the hassle of bundling your primitives into wrapper objects in various situations (like putting them in collections), but autoboxing doesn't always behave as you might expect. Krishna Srinivasan has details on how this milestone feature really works.

rating comment: It's just what you need to know about Java 5's autoboxing feature!

Yahoo sucht CC-Lizenz content

Yahoo hat jetzt eine Spezialsuche gestartet, die es erlaubt, gezielt nach Inhalten zu fahnden, die unter einer Creative-Commons-Lizenz (CC-Lizenzen) stehen. Damit ist es möglich, die Suche nach Bildern beispielsweise so einzuschränken, dass nur Bilder angezeigt werden, deren Lizenz auch eine kommerzielle Nutzung oder Modifikationen gestattet.

Interessant, leider benutze ich selten Yahoo! :-)