• Question (Q): Why Django build-in Web Server (development server) works VERY SLOWLY on Windows 7 ? And how to fix this?
  Answer (A): seems it’s all about DNS… To fix this just open C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file (in notepad for example) and uncomment (i.e. remove “#”) in the following line: 127.0.0.1 localhost

• to be continue…

There exists also not so good news – this time for PHP developers – support of PHP was removed from release of free (”community”) version of IDEA, so developers can stick with other completely free IDEs this time – for example NetBeans comes to my mind this time… as alternative… but after Oracle buy Sun, I not sure it is right choice… but this is “idea” for another post…)

Actually personally I don’t understand why “Community” version does not support PHP, Javascript, Python or Ruby as this languages are used by a lot (if not most) of “open source” developers that for some reasons does not feet into JetBrains licensing of commercial version of IntelliJ IDEA for open source projects. I think “vice versa” if compare to JetBrains – Commercial version must have extended support for Java development, while Community edition must support MORE other open source frameworks / languages, like Ruby, Python or PHP etc. Sure it’s only my “personal” opinion, but I think most of developers will agree with me – people that use IDEA for Java development (usually in enterprises) can (and will!) simply BUY commercial licenses, while a lot of potential IntelliJ users actually want to use it for small open source projects in non-Java languages stack and want to get IDE for FREE!

But totally – all new features show that JetBrains go in right direction – support for most “progressive” and “latest” technologies in IDEA (even if it is available only commercially )

Keep it going, JetBrains!

• jQuery UI – “provides abstractions for low-level interaction and animation, advanced effects and high-level, themeable widgets”
• Form Plugin – “allows you to easily and unobtrusively upgrade HTML forms to use AJAX”
• Metadata Plugin – “extracting metadata from classes, random attributes, child elements and HTML5 data-* attributes”
• Validation Plugin
• Dimensions Plugin – “Extends jQuery to provide dimension-centric methods for getting widths, heights, offsets and more”
• Bgiframe Plugin - “Fixes z-index issues in IE6″
• Watermark Plugin – watermark capability to HTML input and textarea elements
• jReject Plugin – “jReject provides a simple, robjust, light-weight way to display rejections based on a the browser, specific browser version, specific platforms, or rendering engine”

to be continue…

Some additional useful plugins:

• http://plugins.jquery.com/project/lavalamp2 – LavaLamp allows you to add a nice background hover effect to HTML link lists using the Easing library.

Some more links on jQuery:

• http://www.tripwiremagazine.com/2009/09/95-exceptionally-useful-jquery-plugins-tutorials-and-cheat-sheets.html
• http://jqueryfordesigners.com/
• http://visionwidget.com/inspiration/web/398-latest-jquery-plugins.html
• http://www.tutorial9.net/resources/22-beautiful-jquery-plugins-for-web-designers/

• Funding Roadmap – Agile tool to made online business plan, share it and collaborate on it!
• Israel Startup Weekend – 54-hour event that builds startup communities, companies and projects.
• Seedcamp – “At Seedcamp, we believe Europe has the talent, the role models, and the capital founders need to succeed. We want to provide a catalyst for the next generation of great entrepreneurs and help you take risks, think big, and succeed. Participating in Seedcamp will give you enormous validation and access to a world-class network of advisors to help you with every aspect of your business, plus a direct route to seed and venture capital.”
• TechAviv Angels
• AngelSoft - “Angelsoft provides simple, powerful tools for finding and working efficiently with angel and venture capital investors throughout the funding process”
• Startupmania - “blog centered around Israel-based start-up companies, technological initiatives and new software developments.”

Solutions:

1. Write own low level code that will read and collect some way information from servers / applications. This way usually “hard” as you will probably spend hours to figure out how you can get CPU temperature, fan speed or how to made network ping in your favorite language using some low level OS API!
2. Use one of existed libraries and write application that can read and collect some way information from servers / application via this library. This way is much better and simple if compare to previous one! Library give you abstraction from low level system details (and it’s more important if you use different hardware / software architectures in your web farm). One of examples of such libraries is SIGAR (http://sourceforge.net/projects/sigar, http://support.hyperic.com/display/SIGAR/Home) – completely free and open source with support of amazing amount of OS / architectures). Another useful library – RRDtool -
   use it for data logging and graphing system for time series data and “to write your custom monitoring shell scripts or create whole applications using its Perl, Python, Ruby, TCL or PHP bindings”
   
3. Use one of already existed monitoring applications – Open Source / free or commercial. If you want open-source and free take a look into Nagios for example, with a lot of  plugins / addons (actually one way somewhere between 2) and 3) is to just create your own Nagios plugin and use it together with Nagios to monitor your servers and applications). But be ready that you will need to dial with a lot of installation / configurations issues and that you boss will not understand how he can use this soft (at least before you will found or build cool visualizer for Nagios). So in case if you did not dial with it before or you just want something “reach”, with nice UI etc, I recommend to give a try to ManageEngine Application Manager with ability to monitor up to 25 servers / applications in free version (in terms of ManageEngine you get “25 monitors” for free) or to try Hyperic HQ (exists in both Open Source and Enterprise versions). Both have nice UI, very simple installation (just currently Hyperic HQ needs to be installed manually for example on 64 bit Windows OS as no installation package exists for now for 64 bit  etc) and configuration. Both can be extended and adjusted very well for your situation. So review both applications and select one that feet better your needs (they have little different features and final cost will be different based on your situation. Generally as more servers / applications you need to monitor as more cheaper Hyperic will be if you will compare it to ManageEngine). Another well know solution is “Zenoss“, which have both commercial (really expensive – starting from 100$ per year per resource) and open source versions (sure open source have just “core” functionality, but it’s reach enough to take a look into it)

Maybe you know another way / library or application ? Let me know and I will update this post!

1. Support of “Open Standards”

• Microformats – hCard, hResume etc
• OpenSearch
• HR-XML
• Semantic Web (with Resource Description Framework – RDF)
• industry-standard ONET database (analyze all job titles and descriptions and cross-check them with this database etc)

2. Support for I18N

Evejob Projects will support Internationalization (I18N) and allow users to select site language in addition to auto detect browser features. Major requirement in I18N – support of right to left languages and page designs in addition to left to right (this will allow to made Hebrew sites powered by Evejob, for example).

3. Cloud hosting support

There will be additional projects (EvejobDJG, EvejobAzNET, EvejobRoRG, EvejobGoGG) that will be specially designed to be hosted in various clouds like Google App Engine or Azure
… work in progress under this post …

So frameworks listed above all follow MVC terminology where you actually create your own Models (Domain Models possible with Persistence), implement Controller (with actions) and create presentation using Views (that is actually powered by some build-in or custom template engine).

One framework – Django – that we use for Evejob project made use of a little different terminology (instead of MVC): Model-View-Template.
Model term is used for same purposes like Model in MVC – it is simply domain model (provided usually by build-in to Django ORM, but also possible to use your own ORM… just note that it require little more “tuning / hacking” than in other frameworks).
View in Django play the same role as Controller in MVC.
And “Template” term in MVT actually used instead of “View” from MVC (while Template terms actually also used in MVC in sense that view CAN be represented as result of Template rendering)
What I found from my experience that this difference in terminology does NOT make any actually impact on development process!
More so, actually most MVCs that available in the market used mostly in “MTC” mode – i.e. “Model-Template-Controller”.
What does it means? It means that Controllers actually render Templates in MOST of the cases! Sure in case if you use MVC framework to build for example Web Services, you will probably not render any Templates and your controllers (controllers in MVC or your Views in MVT) actually more likely will return JSON or XML directly (OK… XML it is possible also to build using Templates sometimes – look how it is done in Grails for example! But let’s think here that we want to return raw XML from Controller without any template engine). Sometimes you also can return JavaScript or any other format etc directly from Views in MVT or from Controllers in MVC.
What is good in MVT is “order” of letters that give better understanding for developers that first time here about this pattern – “Model” <-> “View” <-> “Template”. This way logical flow going – i.e. views are in the “middle” of this logical flow! (using this principle it was better initially probably call MVC as MCV, i.e. “Model” <-> “Controller” <-> “View” , so “Controllers” become in the middle, center of logic). It related only to logical structure, because in MVC pattern, Model accessible (and used) actually in both Controller and View, same like in MVT both Views and Templates share same Model! You can read a short overview of MVC at Wikipedia article for example if want little more information)
But as I tell before – main thing is “understanding” how pattern works, not how we call it! And “idea” of implementation of this patter in Django and other frameworks is exactly same even so name is not!

- Django Project Home

• http://www.djangosites.org – list of Django sites
• http://pinaxproject.com – a platform for rapidly developing websites
• http://cloud27.com – site that was build using Pinax
• http://www.django-cms.org/ – Django CMS
• http://code.google.com/p/django-tagging/ – A generic tagging application for Django projects, which allows association of a number of tags with anyModel instance and makes retrieval of tags simple.
• http://djangopluggables.com/ – 3-rd party Django applications
• http://www.djangosnippets.org/ – useful “snippets” of reusable Django code

Actually we both agree that we don’t see any reason to invent another “low level” / “middle” level compiled programming language… with Nothing NEW inside (see notes at the end of the post)! Just reuse of best practices, but with a LOT of limitations compared with C++ for example  (just take a look here for some comparison information – most impressive that Google decide: “Go does not have classes with constructors or destructors. Instead of class methods, a class inheritance hierarchy, and virtual functions, Go provides interfaces, which are discussed in more detail below. Interfaces are also used where C++ uses templates.”… very strange for me… I can agree with C# approach for such details, but seems Google approach is too much!!! I note sure is it really OOP  or not if you have only interfaces in hands…. when I do everyday development in C#, at least few times per day I not happy that I don’t have true multiple inheritance, what developers will say about “Go” if they start use it everyday??? )!

Personally I think that if Google want invent some “own” programming language (and only in case if they really want OWN…) they need to take a look into high (or very high) level multi paradigm languages like  F# or Scala (or at least on Groovy with his meta programming features for example) and does not invent another “c/c++” or “Python” inspired language !

But what is most interesting and curious is that Google give the name for new language exactly same like another person name his language few years ago!  To be more concrete, go to the issue 9 page in google issues tracking page for new language:

Amazing! Just read comments! Ha ha ha! Never see something like this before regarding programming languages! Google took this name and even not “google” for it ! Amazing stupid mistake! Yes, even companies like Google with best and talented people made such stupid mistakes! Actually, I not sure that name “Go” anyway is a good name for such language (and not only me think this way – read comments to issue 9 to get many examples!)…

Even for me, with average (or even low) level of English it looks strange that something that they promote as “fast” have the name “Go” (as we all know most of things that “Go” is slow by default)… Why they not name it “Run” , if they want that this language actually “run” ?! Or like many people suggest “Goo” (from Google) ?

Anyway, it looks really curious……..

Hope this will just “push” Google to develop BETTER OWN language (it MUST be HIGH level or VERY HIGH level language for sure!!!) and probably select for it BETTER name!

Notes:
1) in this post I follow latest definitions for  “low level” and “high level” languages… Sure long time ago, “low level” was assembler and C was “high level” language! But currently, it looks like languages like C become really “low level” also! You can check for example following Wikipedia article to get more information).  After reading most of information on Go language website, I still not sure can we call this language “Object Oriented” for example… In most areas approach of Google looks minimum “strange”… Except maybe how they implement concurrency… Maybe I just need to try to code something on it to get  better understanding?)
2) Please note that I DON’T describe “Go” language as “bad” language. Instead I just put it to “low level” or “middle level” where it looks perfectly!  Sure Google will found A LOT of ways how to use this language (and I think maybe already found such ways – for example to embed it in Chrome – read more here) and will “push” usage of  this language inside Google and sure outside! And Google really have resources to do this! And some people will probably LIKE new simple but speed language! What I just NOT happy is that this language is NOT really high level language (NO Generics for example, at least by now!). Sure it’s just first release, maybe Google will improve it… but  Google likes “minimalism” style, so….. Anyway, let’s just wait a little! Maybe they change language name and Universe!

New in the November 2009 SDK (quote from Microsoft Windows Azure team newsletter):

• Windows Azure Service Runtime managed library: The latest version of the Service Hosting Runtime API includes support for enhanced communication between roles and for runtime notification of service configuration changes. Direct communication between role instances enables new application development scenarios, including applications that distribute state across role instances. Service configuration changes include an increase or decrease in the number of request role instances and changes to the values of configuration settings.
• Windows Azure Diagnostics managed library: The new Diagnostics API enables logging using standard .NET APIs. The Diagnostics API provides built-in support for collecting standard logs and diagnostic information, including the Windows Azure logs, IIS 7.0 logs, Failed Request logs, crash dumps, Windows Event logs, performance counters, and custom logs.
• Certificate Management: Enhanced support for SSL certificates in Windows Azure and in the Windows Azure SDK enables the secure automated deployment of certificates to services hosted on Windows Azure.
• Variable-size Virtual Machines : Developers may now specify the size of the virtual machine to which they wish to deploy a role instance, based on the role’s resource requirements. The size of the VM determines the number of CPU cores, the memory capacity, and the local file system size allocated to a running instance.
• External endpoints for worker roles. A worker role may now define any number of external endpoints for HTTP, HTTPS, and TCP, and specify the desired port number for any external endpoint.
• Persistent local resource storage: Developers can now choose to persist data written to a local storage resource at runtime when the role is recycled.
• Windows Azure Storage Client managed library: The Storage Client library provides a .NET API for accessing the Windows Azure storage services.
• Improved Development Storage: Development storage provides a high-fidelity simulation of the Windows Azure storage services in the cloud. Tables can now be created dynamically in the development storage Table service and are no longer required to be generated in advance.
• Updated samples: The samples included with the Windows Azure SDK have been updated to demonstrate new features. The samples now include both C# and Visual Basic versions.

As we can see – a lot of improvements and new features introduced in this release. I will made review of them right after will have time to check (hopefully today later)! In any case, glad that MS improve Azure SDK so quickly!

Update: after installation and first review, I found following:

• It seems like Microsoft finally have “official” Client library for Azure Storage. The name is same like from samples before, i.e. “StorageClient”, but now it is in “Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient” namespace, not like “Microsoft.Samples.ServiceHosting.StorageClient” that was before! It is also VERY extended and improved, so if you going to use Azure Storage, for sure you need to use this library (and I am also going to use it in my EvejobAzNET project) – it give you access to Blob Service, Queue Service and Table Service! Sure like before, it is possible to use simple .NET Client Library for ADO.NET Data Services (and new library use it inside anyway, just check that it reference System.Data.Services.Client library inside)… But with official Azure Storage Client library a lot of tasks become much more simple! You can found this library (*.dll) in “c:\Program Files\Windows Azure SDK\v1.0\ref\” folder, together with other useful binaries!
• It is possible now to use another “official” library to get programmatic access to most of functionality available before only from Azure Developer Portal (and actually I don’t know why, but for some reasons Portal works and looks not best way! You can google, A LOT of people complain about issues with this!).
• A new Library for Logging and Diagnostic functionality was added to SDK (Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Diagnostics namespace) - feel free to review samples in SDK (zip archives available in root folder of SDK installation, i.e. in C:\Program Files\Windows Azure SDK\v1.0 by default – samples-cs.zip for C# version and samples-vb.zip for VB version)
• A lot of other improvements / features was added that relate mostly to development / production environment (Visual Studio Azure support, new release of Development Fabric etc) – they not change significantly your code / application design, instead of features described above that I highly recommend to review in case if you develop for Azure!