NetBeans to continue under Oracle

This article summaries a live webcast where Oracle president Charles Philips reiterated their commitment to Java technologies following the Sun acquisition.  One item of note was that they would continue to support NetBeans as a “lightweight” IDE.  

A New Dawn For Java | Javalobby

Netbeans will continue as the “lightweight IDE for Java developers” and will have an increased focus on mobile development and dynamic languages. NetBeans has made some huge progress in the last 2 years under Sun’s watch, and I’m sure that it will continue with Oracle funding and steering it.

Google Reader lets you subscribe to a web page

Add enough of these to a Google Reader account, mash up with Yahoo Pipes, and
the results could be very interesting.

Google Reader Lets You Subscribe to Any Page on the Web

Today Google has rolled out a subtle change to Google Reader that lets you create custom feeds to track pages that don’t already have them. So you can subscribe to updates for any webpage simply by typing the URL into the “Add a subscription” text box.

Sun Sets

A famous person once said: “That’s all, folks!”  The EU just gave Oracle the green light to gobble up Sun Microsystems.  Hang on to your NetBeans IDE.  Its going to be a bumpy night.

Oracle wins unconditional EU approval for Sun buy | Reuters

Oracle Corp won unconditional European Union approval on Thursday for its $7 billion takeover of Sun Microsystems, a month after offering public pledges to sooth regulatory concerns.

Apple Event Jan 27

So.  The tablet?  Or a touch screen iMac?  Both?

It’s on: Apple holding January 27th event to show off its ‘latest creation’ — Engadget

Yes folks — the rumors are true. Apple is holding an event on January 27th to show off something the company is calling their “latest creation.”

Recipe for installing Chrome OS on a Mac with Parallels

Chrome OS is still an Alpha release, but here’s a chance to preview it, if you are running Parallels.

How To Install Google’s Chrome OS On Mac using Parallels Desktop 5 | Cult of Mac

Ingredients:

* Any Mac — a MacBook or iBook is ideal (this tutorial was tested only on OS X 10.6.2)
* Compatible Chrome OS Virtual Machine file prepared for VMWare, located here.
* Parallels Desktop 5.0 for Mac

Special Character Palette on a Mac

Some days you learn something new and useful.  This is one of them.  I had to enter a 2⁷ in a post (not this one).  It turns out you can bring up a handy palette of these things. Press command+option+T to make the character palette window appear.  After that, its mostly drag and drop.  Who knew?

Mac OS X: How to type Unicode characters, including Symbol or Zapf Dingbat fonts

Many Mac OS X applications support Unicode, a single, world-wide character set that works with most of the world’s languages. The advantages of using Unicode include easy interchange of data with users of other operating systems, and not needing to know which font to use to display text in other languages correctly.

Google’s China Post

Google has an official post regarding the China event.  Excellent reading but the synopsis is “Censor This”.

Official Google Blog: A new approach to China

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn

The GDrive is here

This does not automatically sync your desktop file changes like Time Capsule or DropBox would, but it is the fabled GDrive.  It would be so nice if this flie space worked with Google Sites.

Official Google Docs Blog: Upload and store your files in the cloud with Google Docs

Instead of emailing files to yourself, which is particularly difficult with large files, you can upload to Google Docs any file up to 250 MB. You’ll have 1 GB of free storage for files you don’t convert into one of the Google Docs formats (i.e. Google documents, spreadsheets, and presentations), and if you need more space, you can buy additional storage for $0.25 per GB per year.

Interesting insights into JVM vs C performance.

With naive code designs, Java gets close to C in execution times. 

pragmatism: Micro benchmark – C vs Java (nth Fibonacci number)

Whoa. Though Java didn’t beat C in this naive implemenation, it’s close enough. So, the myth about Java catching up with C does seem valid for long running programs which happen to hit some particular code repeatedly. What’s more interesting is Java does beat C if the optimizations aren’t turned on.

Pandora for your car

The idea is that Pioneer will be selling an in-dash unit that will remote to your iPhone which is still where Pandora runs.  But the controls and the music will be routed to your car.  The cost is $1200, but there is no service fee (beyond what you pay for your iPhone, of course).  Satellite radio can’t catch a break, can it?

Does Pandora for Cars Spell Death for Deejays?

Says Pandora CTO Tom Conrad, “Pandora still runs on your iPhone and controls access to the service, but all control and display elements [will be] shifted to the dash. This allows you to tune into your stations, play songs, give thumbs up/down, as well as get information (including album art) about the currently playing song, all with your iPhone safely tucked away in the glove compartment.”