The Internet has matured alot since it’s inception. It has under gone many changes and today we are seeing some amzing things done with various Internet technologies. One of the key factor in this vast amount of rich and interactive data is Web Standards.

Web standards have allowed us to transmit and share data in reliable and predictable ways. Semantics is a component of Standards, although not as important as a defined structure for the data, that describes the data it contains. Semantics, in many ways, is about common sense. It makes sense to expect a paragraph tag (<p>) to contain a paragraphic of text. It would also make sense to expect a table to contain a grid or table of data. So why are tables used for layouts?

That in and of it’s self is a very interesting question. While the we have made great advances there are still some areas that are a little slow in catching on, for whatever reason. One area is XHTML. While the XHTML specifiaction has been out for years there are still many developers using HTML 4. I was even talking to a fellow developer the other day and a company he is working with still has the bulk of their web work in HTML 3.2, the horror!

Perhaps it is the fact that Internet Explorer still doesn’t correctly support the XHTML mime type (XML application) that developers have asked, “Why bother?” Or perhaps some just don’t see the benefit in making the switch. Now to be clear I am not saying we have to go back and convert evry website or application we have ever written but at least any new development should be in XHTML.

Why bother? Well, for me anyways, one big reason is Google. The search engine giant is favoring semantic and clean markup in it’s page indexing. So a little extra effort when writing your markup can have big payoffs down the road.

So back to the question of why tables for layouts. Well there are many arguments like tabled layouts take longer to load and are less favorable to search engines, which are probably true. Ultimately every developer must choose for themselves. Believe me if I could cram tableless layouts and semantics down everyones throats I would. I am tired of working on projects that someother person has banaided together with horrible markup and then trying to repair the damage (or at least just figure out what is going on). Whether it is that you’re comfotatble with tables or you think that it is easier just bite the bullet, switch to semantic markup and use tables for what they were made for, tabular data. You’ll be glad you did, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not while your cursing my very existence as you piece together your first layout then look at it in IE6, but someday you will thank me!

Cheers.

So what is wrong with the javascript window onload event? Well for many years I, just like many other developers, thought javascript window onload was perfectly fine and was exactly what I needed. Well I don’t think that is true any longer. The problem is that if you have a page with large files like images, animations, or video then there will be a huge delay before your code gets executed. The onload event does not fire until every last piece of the page is loaded.

That isn’t what we want. We just want to wait until the DOM is loaded and is able to be manipulated. So how do we do this? Well, below if the code you need to do just that. The onDomReady event accepts a function as a parameter and that function gets executed as soon as the DOM is available and before the rest of the media is done loading.

This will result in more responsive code and less delay in execution.

//create onDomReady Event
window.onDomReady = DomReady;

//Setup the event
function DomReady(fn)
{
	//W3C
	if(document.addEventListener)
	{
		document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", fn, false);
	}
	//IE
	else
	{
		document.onreadystatechange = function(){readyState(fn)}
	}
}

//IE execute function
function readyState(fn)
{
	//dom is ready for interaction
	if(document.readyState == "interactive")
	{
		fn();
	}
}

Once you have included the above code in your page you can use it in a similar manner as below.

//execute as soon as DOM is loaded
window.onDomReady(onReady);

//do on ready
function onReady()
{
	alert("The DOM is ready!");
}

Ubuntu Feisty: 0$. Cardboard box: 0$. Duct tape: 1$. Having the bitchin’est case mod this side of the trailer park: priceless.

read more | digg story

Chinese police and the FBI worked together to take down two Chinese piracy groups recently, which they credit with being in possession of counterfeit software valued at half a billion dollars.

read more | digg story

We pulled together a desktop that can ably handle today’s average demands, built with easy-to-assemble, off-the-shelf components for a total cost of less than $250.

read more | digg story

ScottGu’s blog announced the “pre-alpha” release of IronRuby, a .Net implementation of the popular RUby language. IronRuby appears, although early on and no benchmarks have yet been done, to address some of the speed concerns that plague Ruby and have been a growing concern for sites such as Twitter.

Today we are making available the first public drop of our IronRuby implementation. You can learn more about how to download the source, build it, and try it out from John Lam’s blog post here.

Today’s IronRuby drop is still a very early version, and several language features and most libraries aren’t implemented yet (that is why we are calling it a “pre-alpha” release). It does, though, have much of the core language support implemented, and can also now use standard .NET types and APIs.

Today we are making available the first public drop of our IronRuby implementation. You can learn more about how to download the source, build it, and try it out from John Lam’s blog post here.

Today’s IronRuby drop is still a very early version, and several language features and most libraries aren’t implemented yet (that is why we are calling it a “pre-alpha” release). It does, though, have much of the core language support implemented, and can also now use standard .NET types and APIs.

IronRuby has been architected to take advantage of a new DLR feature we call “Dynamic Sites” - which delivers a fast adaptive call-site method caching implementation. It also uses the lightweight-code generation features of the CLR. Lightweight code generation enables dynamic language implementations to create in-memory IL that is then JIT’d into native code at runtime (without ever having to save anything to disk). This can yield much better runtime performance than interpreted code, and the lightweight codegen feature ensures that once we are finished with the JIT’d code we can optionally garbage collect it to avoid leaking.

We are releasing today’s drop mainly for developers interested in language implementations to start looking at the IronRuby source code, and learn how it was implemented. Developers interested in playing with an early version of Ruby for .NET can also download it and give it a spin.

By: Andrew D. Ive

The dot com era proved that just building it isn’t enough. The chicken and the egg issue exists -you need customers to get customers… and attempting to launch a web site, is that issue on steroids. So, how to get traction?

Here are Ten FREE Traction building Ideas we are trying:

1) Email Your Friends:
Find everyone you know that relates to your target market and introduce them to your website via email… as you know them, leverage every piece of emotional capital you have with them to encourage them to take a look at your new site and join.

2) Ask Your Friends to Refer Others:
If you send an email to people who are your target market, clearly articulate why it is valuable to ‘THEM’ (not just you) to join your site… and then ask and make it easy for them to refer people they know. Here’s an example of an email I wrote that asks for a referral -

“Please forward to anyone that may be interested… entrepreneurs, advisors, people with Blogs, press contacts etc! Even forwarding to four or five contacts will make a big difference for us!

Happy New Year and thanks!

++

I’ve just discovered a new web service bringing potential business advisors together with entrepreneurs and early stage businesses. For Advisors - It’s a great way to discover new deal flow and get involved in a hot new company. For Entrepreneurs - a great way to take your business to the next level in 2007!

The site is called Advisor Garage - http://www.AdvisorGarage.com and was recently featured in Business Week!

Please sign up and forward this email to great advisors and entrepreneurs.
++

After three or four weeks of steps 1 & 2 we found that we had begun to get a few people onboard… So now what?

3) Write a Press Release and get it OUT there…
I can almost hear a few folks swallowing and already considering looking for the next blog… it really isn’t that tough and it isn’t expensive. In fact, its FREE! Don’t believe me? Consider signing up to PR Leap (http://www.prleap.com/learn_more). Not only do they have some good articles which explain for dummies (like me!) how to write a press release but they also offer a free submission service to multiple channels such as Google News, Google Search, Yahoo! Search, Topix.net, Technorati, MSN, Ask News, Moreover, NewsNow and others. According to their website - PR Leap is the best way to send your news release(s) to all major search engines, newswires, and websites. And basic accounts are free!

So what happened with us? Well we signed up, created a one page press release (took about 30 minutes), submitted it and it was approved earlier today. It will appear tomorrow. If you are interested, the link to the press release is: http://www.prleap.com/pr/61185/

The basic plan (read… Free) comes with stats, so I’ll let you know in a few days if the press release was actually read by anyone and if it was picked up by any sites, bloggers, press etc. Let’s see how good PR Leap and our press release writing skills are!

4) A Personalized Toolbar:
A great startup called Conduit (http://www.Conduit.com) offers people the opportunity to create their own, personalized toolbar for FREE. Conduit has a wizard embedded within their website which takes you through the setup process step-by-step. It took about twenty minutes and once you’re done, they create a link to your toolbar download site which you can then share through an email signature or through a click through download on your new networking site. There are a number of cool ways to tailor the toolbar… your branded search, create links to particular pages on your own site, add weather, a radio and so on to make sure its a value download for your customers.

5) Design Your Site with the Customer In Mind and Make Inviting Others Easy
If, like us, your marketing budget is measured by the quarters rattling around in your pocket, then do your site a favor and design it so the ‘Invite Others’ button is never far away. No matter what page the users happen to be on. Bold it, make it big, underline it if you have to but referrals from happy customers are always easier to get than attracting new customers.

6) Friends & Contacts Revisisted:
Do any of your friends know anyone in the press or people who have blogs ? Well you won’t know until you ask… ASK!

7) Join Linked In (http://www.linkedin.com)
If you haven’t already, consider joining linked in. Yes, its another networking site, and you could consider them the compeitition (In your dreams!)… but after joining you can search through the directory and find people that may either a) be interested in joining your site or b) encouraging others to do so. If you aren’t a member already, take a look

Groups & Forums:
Are there Yahoo (http://groups.yahoo.com) or Google Groups (http://groups.google.com) or other online forums that include the types of people you want to attract to your new networking site? If so, join them but beware… most groups want members to contribute to the discussions and no groups appreciate spam. So find the best forums for your target customers, join and spend some time getting to know what subjects are being discussed. Give it a week or two then jump in and add some value… and make sure that your post includes your email and perhaps the web address. If it is valuable, then members may check out your new site…

One last thing, if there aren’t any good groups with your target customers… consider creating your own… and make it it feeds your new networking site. Here’s one I started and yes… I know it only has a few members… but its more links in the internet for your website which appears in your google or Alexa results: http://groups.google.com/group/Harvard_Entrepreneurs_Startups?lnk=oa&hl=en

9) Write to your Existing Members:
Do you have a few members? If so, email them occassionally (Not every day!) and remind them of the value of your site… perhaps highlight a particularly useful tool or feature of your website. Maybe reach out to some of the individual members and ask them if you can write about them joining the site, a person feature if you will. At the bottom of each of these emails… give them a few sentences (above for example) to send on to others they know. Stress how much you would appreciate their help and how important they are to you and your young business.

10) Drum roll… .badda badda badda… .Create a Blog!
Here’s hoping that a blog is the tenth and most valuable means of getting the message out there about a new networking site. (Wordpress.com is FREE)

This article by Nikhil caught my attention because it hits close to home. I have been debating on creating a Facebook application but was wishing for a nice clean (prefereably C# based) .Net framework to use. I’ll be keeping an eye on this as it develops.

In the couple of months since Facebook opened itself up to application developers, it has transformed itself into a platform. There is a mind-boggling momentum at play, not only in terms of user signups, but in the excitement around developing for the platform as well. A lot of web startups are adding a Facebook experience, and at the same time, a number of new applications are popping up (every day… literally!) that are leveraging the power of the social network in creative ways. It will be interesting to see how Facebook holds up over time compared to other networks such as MySpace which seems to be dying in its own noise and chaos.

I’ve been hooked on Facebook for couple of weeks, and am super-impressed with it. It has spurred me into experimenting with some ideas. Along the way (in classic developer-style), I’ve put together a small framework, Facebook.NET, for developing Facebook apps using ASP.NET. In the spirit of experimenting, I’ve also shared it out on CodePlex in its early form. This post contains a very brief intro on using it along with links to key Facebook developer material.

I came across this great article by Jon Galloway on why you should not use SELECT * style queries.

Are SELECT * queries bad? Sure, everyone know that. But, why?
It’s returning too much data, right?

That’s the common answer, but I don’t think it’s the right one. If you’re working with a reasonably normalized database, the actual network traffic difference is pretty small.

By: Paul Colbert

The Blu-ray Disc belongs to a new generation of optical discs capable of staging high density data. Blu-Ray technology is based on a blue-violet coloured laser. The blue laser operates at a wave length of 405 nm, while older technology such as DVDs and CDs are based on red and infrared lasers that works at 650 and 780 nm. Since the wave length is shorter with a blue laser, the new Blu-ray technology makes is possible to store much more information

The advantage with the Blu-ray technology is that the laser beam can be focused much more tightly at the surface of the disc. Tight focus means that a smaller spot will be produced on the surface on the disc, and when the spots become smaller there will naturally be room for more information on each disc. The minimum spot size of any laser depends on a naturally accruing phenomenon called diffraction. The narrow beam of light sent out from a laser will always diverge into a wider beam eventually, due to the natural diffraction of waves. Diffraction will also occur the waves meet an obstruction. By reducing the wavelength of a laser, we can affect the diffraction.

In Blu-ray technology, the diffractions is also affected by the fact that the lens used to focus the light has a higher numerical aperture than the lenses found in ordinary DVDs - 0.85 instead of 0.6. Blu-ray technology based appliances are also equipped with a dual-lens system of supreme quality, and the cover layer has been made thinner in order to prevent unwanted optical effects. All this makes it possible for a Blu-ray laser to focus on much smaller spots. The optical improvements are accompanied with a new method for encoding data which makes it possible to store even more data on the Blu-ray disc.

The standard for Blu-ray technology has been developed as a joint venture between several major manufacturers of PCs and consumer electronics, including Sony and Philips. The group is called the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA). The first Blu-ray recorder was launched in Japan in 2003, by Sony. Today, Samsung, JVC, Matsushita (Panasonic) and LG Electronics are all examples of companies using Blu-ray technology in their products. Hewlett Packard has announced that they will release desktop PCs equipped with Blu-ray technology in late 2005.

The main competitor for the Blu-ray technology is the HD DVD format which is also capable of storing more information than a normal DVD. The Blu-ray technology does however allow for more information per layer than the HD DVD format - 25 GB compared to 15 GB. The Blu-ray technology will on the other hand most likely be more expensive to support, at least initially, which can make the HD DVD a tempting alternative. In a Blu-ray disc, the data is stored extremely close to the surface. This made the first Blu-ray discs extremely vulnerable to scratching and many users preferred the tougher HD DVD discs. Since 2004, all Blu-ray discs are coated with a clear polymer called “Durabis” which makes them much more durable. According to the developers of Durabis, the TDK Corporation, a coated Blu-ray disc will work even after being attacked with a screwdriver.