Purely Technological

Chrome hits version 2.0!

// January 6th, 2009 // No Comments » // Chrome, Google, Open-Source

Google Chrome has officially hit version 2.0 (2.0.156.0 as of now). Sporting “new features”, a newer WebKit version, and a new HTTP model — says the Chromium changelog:

mal@chromium.org2009-01-06T03:41:24.729681Z The timing is somewhat arbitrary, but trunk is now developing a major rev (new http, new webkit, new features). Bump Major version to 2.

I can’t quite pinpoint the new features, but there is an option from Page options that seems new: “Create application shortcuts” — which you can use to create a shortcut to the current page (on your desktop, start menu, or the quick-launch bar).

If you’re curious and wish to try the latest Chromium version out, go here and click the first folder, then download the ‘mini_installer.exe’.

Pingdom, try it ;-)

// January 4th, 2009 // No Comments » // Interesting Stuff

Pingdom is a service that pings online services (websites, email services, etc) and monitors their uptime and downtime. As useful as it already sounds, it gets better: Pingdom will notify you (via SMS, Email) of downtime — it even notifies you when the service has been restored. As one could expect, this service is not free. For $9.95 you get 5 checks a month with 20 SMS notifications, or for $39.95 you can get 30 checks with 200 SMS notifications. There’s a 30-day free trial for those who want to try it, here (sign-up on the left).

Continue Reading

Google Chrome: Manual Migration to Snapshot Builds

// September 23rd, 2008 // No Comments » // Chrome, Google

If you’ve already downloaded the chrome channel switcher, and figured out that the updater doesn’t function correctly in the About window, then you’re probably itching to try the latest of the latest (albeit unstable) build of Google Chrome! While it’s not a walk in the park, and it will require some manual adjustments, there is a way to get the latest updates.

Be forewarned: the latest may not be the greatest, it’s a hit and miss scenario.

Acquiring the latest build
Everyone can acquire the latest build of Chrome through their Buildbot system – aka snapshots.

You can find the repository of snapshots here: http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/chromium-rel-xp/

The latest build is the highest numbered folder – the latest build number is also stored in the file entitled “LATEST”. To install it, download the installed (mini-installer.exe) located inside the build folder.

Continue Reading

C# How-To: Creating a Driver Foundation

// September 22nd, 2008 // 2 Comments » // .NET, C#, Programming

“Driver Foundation”?
A driver foundation is a class that your program will go through to access several other types of classes that all have something in common (i.e.: A database driver).

Generic Outlook

Actual Example for Database Platform

Why would I need this? Is this really necessary?
If you’re not worried about expandability in your application, then forget about it. However, if you’re designing an application that would need to access and query different types of databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, MSSQL, etc), then having a driver foundation is ideal. Otherwise you will end up with an unmanageable mess of code – you would need to control (for each different database type) the output type for queries, query syntax, and a bunch of other stuff.

Using a driver foundation you really only deal with one type of object, and one type of output for all types of databases.

Continue Reading