Improved $$ performance in Prototype 1.5.1_rc1

The prototype guys have done some great work in improving the $$ CSS selector operation and it’s much faster. If you use prototype, and I use it a lot, this is a major improvement. Old news for some, but very exciting for me. Read the release notes for more information, and check out the speed comparison against other JavaScript libraries.

Technorati tags: prototype, javascript

Jeff Han’s Multi-touch Screen at TED 2007

Jeff Han was at TED again this year, here he is talking about his multi-touch screen interface. Did you see that little circular widget he uses to change the operational context of his touches? Probably inspired by the wheel on the iPod, and a clever way to use the rotational motion of the user’s wrist.

Technorati tags: jeff han, multitouch, ui

Google’s Personality

I just logged on this morning to see that there are now selectable themes on the Google personalised home page. Actually, it makes sense for them to take this step, and the window bars and menus look really slick – but the images might be too cutesy for some.

I wouldn’t have associated this style of personality with Google before, I imagined a different feel. Anyway – I think I’ll try “Tea House” and see how I go with that.

Technorati tags: google, personalization, portal

Jazz at Rakinos

While in Auckland, my friend and I checked out Rakinos in High St – a great Sunday night with some open mic Jazz and topped off with someone’s (who are you?) French rendition of Autumn Leaves with an English chorus thrown in. Beautiful – and as I just found out – actually the original version was in French. (wikipedia article)

They have a myspace page with their gig guide and all the other good stuff that comes with it. If you are in Auckland on a Sunday Night, I really recommend you check Rakinos out.

Technorati tags: music, auckland, jazz, rakinos

David Boloker at Emerging Web Technologies Conference

On Monday some colleagues and I were at the Emerging Web Technologies and Trends Conference in Auckland. Like a lot of conferences, the informal conversations were the most interesting and inspired the best ideas.

We spoke to David Boloker from IBM about web service security and the future of mobile apps, he also showed us his QEDWiki project which allows people to easily “mashup” or integrate web services to create new applications. Reminds me of Yahoo Pipes, but I think it has a lot of potential to be used in the real world, particularly for integrating in-house data behind the firewall with external services. I must have a play with it. It did get me thinking about some of the challenges I face everyday with web services, can you have a critical application which depends on multiple external data sources? David Boloker suggested that in fact, yes you can, and that commercial SLAs will help with this. Also, if we have these SLAs in place, how do we also guarantee the availability and security of our own web services to meet our customers needs? David pointed me in the direction of an IEEE conference last year which has plenty of good papers around these subjects.

Michael Sampson, one of the presenters, has some great posts about the rest of conference, with some interesting stuff on WPF/E and the user-centric nature of the web from Nigel Parker, John Lewis and the other speakers.

Technorati Tags: brightstar, QEDwiki, web2-0, web services