Google präsentiert Konzept für Tablet PC

Leider ist der Eintrag nur auf English verfügbar.

NetBeans, Ruby, Rails und die Geschichte mit UTF8

Ich bin ein NetBeans Benutzer für ca. 4 Jahre. Obwohl Eclipse immer noch meine erste Wahl für Java ist, nutze ich für Ruby/Rails ausschließlich NetBeans.

Wenn ich in Ruby entwickle hatte ich immer Probleme mit dem Encoding. So wurden Umlaute wie äüö usw. im NetBeans Editor korrekt angezeigt, bei der Ausgabe jedoch nicht. Zuerst dachte ich das Problem ist Ruby. Nach ein wenig probieren, stellte sich jedoch heraus Ruby ist nicht das Problem. Dann überprüfte ich die NetBeans Einstellungen. Zum Beispiel kann man in den Projekt Einstellungen das Encoding einstellen:

Jedoch löste dies das Problem nicht. Nach einigem Googlen, entdeckte ich schließlich diesen Blogeintrag. Darin steht, dass NetBeans standardmäßig nicht UTF8 Encoding für Dateien benutzt. Mein erster Gedanke war, warum nicht? Dh, obwohl die Projekt Einstellungen auf UTF8 gesetzt sind, verwendet NetBeans nicht dasselbe Encoding für Dateien! Um das Datei Encoding ebenfalls umzustellen, muss man folgendes machen:

1. gehe in das Verzeichnis etc in dem NetBeans Verzeichnis
2. öffne die Datei netbeans.conf
3. und füge zu den netbeans_default_options folgenden Eintrag hinzu -J-Dfile.encoding=UTF-8

Nachdem funktioniert alles richtig und Deutsche Umlaute werden im Editor und im Ausgabefenster richtig angezeigt.

New details about Google OS

The Austrian news site derStandard has publish an article which reveals some new details about Google OS (in German). The details are based on Chromium Builds and its public source code.

Here is an English translation:

Debian-based system – the browser in full screen mode – navigation in the headline

Beyond a very poor facts announcement, Google has not yet divulged all too much about its future netbook OS ChromeOS. Actually, Google wanted to reveal first details in the next few weeks. But the fact that a central part of the software is being developed fairly open, means that now the first concrete information has leaked.

Chromium

Under the Chromium project, the base of the Google Chrome browser, added recently builds, in addition to normal Windows, Linux and Mac versions, also a separate version for ChromeOS. This can be downloaded from the servers of the project and brought up to current Linux systems to run.

Browser Central

It turns out quickly that Google Chrome seems to actually become the central planning – and exclusive – interface of the operating system. Accordingly, Chrome has a clock built into the title bar, including information such as battery level and the current network connection to display here.

Compact-Nav

Since some of the functions that are usually accessed via a menu bar are now duplicated in the title line of Chrome, it must be assumed that the browser operates in full-screen mode under ChromeOS. There is also a new compact-Nav-bar-mode by both URL line as well as navigation is also migrate into the browser’s frame.

Google OS Compact Navigation

Applications

Also new is a button on the left upper end of the title bar. It links to a login at Google Short, a service that is related to the Google Apps service, meant to gather clear links to websites. It can be assumed that Google will use this overview in ChromeOS as a kind of menu for the various online applications.

Options

Google OS System Settings

Adding ‘whenever’ gem to Rails environment caused warning

I switched this week from Rufus Scheduler to Whenever. The difference between them is that Rufus Scheduler starts per Rails Instance a background Ruby process to handle the scheduling and Whenever uses cron jobs. Rufus Scheduler is a nice gem and which is easy to use, but for me it seems an overhead to run a second process for each Rails instance (I know that this can be avoided, but what when the Rails process with Rufus dies and all other Rails instances are running?) On the other hand, cron job and Whenever are also easy to use and don’t add much overhead to the server.

When I added Whenever, I got a warning every time I started Rails:

.../vendor/rails/railties/lib/rails/version.rb:3: warning: already initialized constant MAJOR
.../vendor/rails/railties/lib/rails/version.rb:3: warning: already initialized constant MINOR
.../vendor/rails/railties/lib/rails/version.rb:3: warning: already initialized constant TINY
.../vendor/rails/railties/lib/rails/version.rb:3: warning: already initialized constant STRING

The problem was that I added a require statement in environment.rb:

require 'whenever'

which isn’t necessary in Rails 2.1 and above. I know it stands in the install instructions, but when I am in a rush, I sometimes doesn’t read it carefully. Even if I should. So if you use the Whenever gem and Rails 2.1 and above and you get the warning from above, it is your fault and not Whenever’s. That said, Whenever does quite a good job for TimeWhale. I am using it for running a Twitter Job that handles tracking time directly from Twitter.

JRuby finds a new home at Engine Yard

Engine Yard (EY) is a enterpricy (serious support and hosting, but pricy) Rails hosting service.  Two months ago at the JavaOne, Engine Yard announced that they will support JRuby. Since then a lot changed, Oracle bought Sun which raised a lot of questions about Sun’s products and frankly I don’t think it looks good for a couple of products. The endangered product list so far: NetBeans, MySQL, JavaFX (despite Larry Ellison commitment), Solaris, and side products like JRuby. Due to some legal reasons, all this is just speculation and no official announcements have been made yet. However, this uncertainty doesn’t help and so many developers and Sun employees are worried. As a consequence of this uncertainty, the JRuby guys left Sun (Oracle) and joined Engine Yard. Charles Nutter, one of the JRuby guys, said: “To be honest, we had no evidence that Oracle wouldn’t support JRuby, but we also didn’t have any evidence that they would. Two out of the three developers making this move have families; we want to make sure JRuby will get to the next level, and we had to make a decision.”

I consider this very good news. Engine Yard has always been a very strong force behind Ruby and Rails. They already employ a bunch of very good developers and now they got themselves a bunch of geniuses more. This not only means that JRuby future looks bright, no, it is shining. Thanks JRuby guys and Engine Yard!

As a side note, Nick Sieger is leaving Project Kenai (another product with an uncertain future I guess) and returning to JRuby full time. Ola Bini is still working on JRuby at ThoughtWorks.

Source:

Sun’s JRuby team jumps ship to Engine Yard