Why did Google produce a browser like Chrome?  For most it seems just a mission impossible to enter the arena where Internet Explorer and Firefox fight for dominance of the browser, with Opera and Safari on the sideline. I suspect there is more to this picture than just another browser, Google is making another step towards cloud computing  with Search and Google Apps. And others also think so:  So says Nick Carr: “To Google, the browser has become a weak link in the cloud system — the needle’s eye through which the outputs of the company’s massive data centers usually have to pass to reach the user … Continue reading Google’s chrome, what is that all about? Cloud Operating System!

This variation on the ‘It is life Jim; illustrates the corporate IT environment is changing fast. Some of the trends will lead to dinosaurs disappearing. The corporate desktop and notebook are dead. After getting control over the PC, surviving the wild first years when departments bought those computers themselves, IT departments for decades have had complete control over the PC. Users are considered to be morons, not capable of anything but use prescribed applications. And not do anything requiring ‘privileges’. Only what the mighty system managers in their wisdom feel the user can handle is given out. That is changing … Continue reading It is IT Jim, but not as we know it.

I have been plagued for weeks now with a mystery I could not solve: Photoshop Elements 6 works on all my PC’s except the notebook I use at work. Switching from Full to Quick Edit or to the Organizer and the damned program crashed. And on even my old and humble desktop PC’s no problems …. Now is giving up not one of my strongest points. I manage my own notebook so to work: removing apps that may interfere (codexes, Nero) did not help. Cleaning th registry did not help, it even made the PC unstable . I even went … Continue reading Driver hell: I hate my lazy system manager

From slashdot! The source code of the MULTICS operating system (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service), the father of UNIX and all modern OSes, has finally been opened. Multics was an extremely influential early time-sharing operating system and introduced a large number of new concepts, including dynamic linking and a hierarchical file system. It was extremely powerful, and UNIX can in fact be considered to be a ‘simplified’ successor to MULTICS. The last running Multics installation was shut down on October 31, 2000. From now on, MULTICS can be downloaded from an official MIT site (it’s the complete MR12.5 source dumped … Continue reading Multics source published

Apache, MySQL, PHP. A powerfull combination, driving many websites from small to very large. Most Content Management Systems are based upon this platform. While researching CMS packages I was getting annoyed by having to test it on my test website out in the open. It always takes some time to quickly change and drop back to another version, all by ftp. Nice to access it via a local file system and a local server. And this way avoid the dangers of online unsecured test systems, spyware etc. Now I was not waiting for the workload of installing an AMP server … Continue reading XAMPP, WAMP in one package

I have evaluated several CMS systems the last weeks. Ranging from (too) simple to sophisticated and state of the art. Here are my conclusions on the systems worth a second look (or not!) CMSimple CMS too simple? As the name says: simple. Only to be used for the most simple of sites, with 2 or 3 pages. Requires only PHP. The actual pages of the site are stored in one html file. Slow in usage. Has an awkward way of adding pages, that also automatically turn into a multilevel menu, alphabetically sorted only. Quite buggy. The developer is not very … Continue reading Content Management Systems

The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on our Capacity for Processing Information A research paper published in 1956 hypothesized that human working memory can hold up to seven bits of information, plus or minus two, at once. Referred to as “Miller’s Magic 7,” this theory was the basis for the seven-digit phone number, the recommended maximum of menu items on a Web page, among other things.   I was confronted with this thought while attending a train the trainers course in 1984, on the bottom of Les Diablerets glacier in Swiss. Good old DEC years! And … Continue reading Magical Number 7 +/- 2

To all the system adminstrators: thank you http://www.sysadminday.com/ Continue reading http://www.sysadminday.com/

On the blog of Dominiek, a friend of my son, I found a reference to Getting Real, a book by 37signals, a company producing web-apps. Their motto is: ‘How To Write Vigorous Software Our modus operandi We believe software is too complex. Too many features, too many buttons, too much to learn. Our products do less than the competition — intentionally. We build products that work smarter, feel better, allow you to do things your way, and are easier to use. Underdo your competition Conventional wisdom says that to beat your competitors you need to one-up them. If they have … Continue reading Getting Real: simplicity in software design