Entries from March 2010 ↓
View original post found on ReadWriteWeb authored by Mike Kirkwood
March 31st, 2010 — startup
Cloudkick is a cloud monitoring start-up that helps system admins manage cloud servers. Today, the company announced it is getting physical, bringing its cloud monitoring capabilities to internally hosted servers and virtual machines.
The company has had a lot of success in helping companies who startup in the cloud and start to achieve scale. It already has a host of hot startup companies including Posterous, Bump Technologies, and Urban Airship. Through listening to users, the company decided to offer local server support to merge its view of all server assets for these organizations.
Sponsor
What is CloudKick?
Cloudkick enables a company to manage internally hosted servers and run the Cloudkick’s agent and report into the same console as your cloud computing infrastructure from AWS, RackSpace, SliceHost and others. When installed, the CloudKick agent will respond to status checks from the Cloudkick monitoring solution, which itself is a distributed cloud application. Cloudkick supports a host of cloud provider solutions and shares a report of feature.
We met with the company at their offices in San Francisco. Upon entry to the warehouse, called “The Farm” near the Mission District, we realized that was a true technology startup, founded by system administrators trying to make their jobs easier. The team participated in Y-Combinator and has received an initial capital infusion by Avalon Ventures.
The Cloudkick system offers consolidated server reports and shows server events by polling registered clients in cloud (and now data centers) and piping them to Cloudkick’s multi-tentant event aggregator.
The tools are modeled after administrative tools like Cacti, Nagios, and Munin, but are delivered on on top of an agent-driven real time view of the underlying assets of server infrastructure.
When checking out the demonstration, we also noted that the browser is updated in real-time as events are polled. This keeps the information fresh without having to re-check and brings the best of browser based real-time communication to system administrations.
Cloudkick’s implementation is simple and elegant. The young company is demonstrating product leadership by living the mantra of simplicity and utility.
Here’s a sample of the graphs from CloudKick’s feature inventory.
Monitoring Every Server
The goal of this release is to bring servers from the datacenter to power of cloud monitoring. It allows a larger and larger region of infrastructure to rely on outside controls to monitor it’s health and well being.
One feature we we intrigued by with Cloudkick was the ability to tag and filter groups of hosts, and to then set rules across them. For example, tagging all servers “web apps” allows a rule to quickly set custom rules for checking up time.
The company offers an API for its services and uses 2-legged OAuth for API authentication. OAuth is “an open protocol to allow secure API authorization in a simple and standard method from desktop and web applications.”. The company also offers a proxy service that streamlines and secures the connections for hosts that will connect to the Cloudkick services.
Cloudkick is a cloud company monitoring clouds and shows us in many ways the architecture of the future. In one of the blog posts from company, they share “love affair with cassandra” and how multi-master database technology is an enabler for co-location of server assets in infrastructure clouds.
Where does Cloudkick go from here?
Discuss
View original post found on Smashing Magazine Feed authored by Cameron Chapman
March 24th, 2010 — consulting
Many developers and designers want to release their work into the world as open-source projects. They want others to be able to build on and share their code. The open-source community is vibrant because of this. Open-source software is available for virtually any application you could think of. Most designers use open-source software or code on a regular basis (WordPress, Drupal and many other CMS’ are open source).
But many developers and designers don’t have a clear picture of what the different open-source licenses really mean. What rights are they relinquishing when they choose an open-source license? Without knowing exactly what the licenses mean and how they’re best applied, developers can’t make informed decisions about which is best for their work.
[By the way, what was the last time you visited our sister site Noupe? Subscribe to Noupe's feed for more inspirational and design-related articles.]
What Is Licensing?
A lot of confusion is out there about what exactly licensing means. When you license your work, you’re not giving away any of your rights. You still hold the original copyright (or patent if you have one) on that work. What a license does is grant specific permissions for others to use that work.
Licensing is a great alternative to just releasing your work into the public domain or granting permissions on a case-by-case basis. By releasing into the public domain, you relinquish any copyright, and no one is obligated to list you as the original author or contributor. In the latter case, you may end up spending more time dealing with individual permissions than designing or developing.
Open-source licenses make it easy for others to contribute to a project without having to seek special permission. It also protects you as the original creator, making sure you at least get some credit for your contributions. It also helps to prevent others from claiming your work as their own.
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public Licence (GPL) is probably one of the most commonly used licenses for open-source projects. The GPL grants and guarantees a wide range of rights to developers who work on open-source projects. Basically, it allows users to legally copy, distribute and modify software. This means you can:
- Copy the software.
Copy it onto your own servers, your client’s servers, your own computer, pretty much anywhere you want. There’s no limit to the number of copies you can make.
- Distribute the software however you want.
Provide a download link on your website. Put the software on a bunch of thumb drives and give them away. Print out the source code and throw it from the rooftops (please don’t, though, because that would waste a lot of paper and make a mess).
- Charge a fee to distribute the software.
If you want to charge someone to provide the software, set it up on their website or do anything else related to it, you can do so. But, you must give them a copy of the GNU GPL, which basically tells them that they could probably get the software elsewhere for free. Best to be up front about that, and about why you’re charging them.
- Make whatever modifications to the software you want.
If you want to add or remove functionality, go ahead. If you want to use a portion of the code in another project, you can. The only catch is that the other project must also be released under the GPL.
Please note that it is very important to see source and binaries distribution as two very different things. Also, there are issues and restrictions with some licenses when used with applications released under “each otherâ€. You can dive into more details in the detailed article Practical Guide to GPL Compliance (via @PierreJoye). To use the GPL, you have to include certain information in the software’s code, along with a copy of the license.
GNU Lesser General Public License
You should be aware of another GNU license: the Lesser General Public Licence (LGPL). It grants fewer rights to a work than the standard GPL. Generally, the LGPL is appropriate for libraries that want to allow linking from non-GPL and non-open-source software. Because the GPL requires that other software with parts of licensed code to also be licensed under the GPL, developers cannot use GPL-licensed code for paid and proprietary software. The LGPL negates this by not requiring other projects with parts of the code to be similarly licensed.
BSD License
BSD licenses represent a family of permissive free software licenses that have fewer restrictions on distribution compared to other free software licenses such as the GNU General Public License. Among different versions of the license two versons are particularly important: the New BSD License/Modified BSD License, and the Simplified BSD License/FreeBSD License. Both have been verified as GPL-compatible free software licenses, and have been accepted as open source licenses by the Open Source Initiative.
The New BSD License (â€3-clause licenseâ€) allows unlimited redistribution for any purpose as long as its copyright notices and the license’s disclaimers of warranty are maintained. The license also contains a clause restricting use of the names of contributors for endorsement of a derived work without specific permission. The primary difference between the New BSD License and the Simplified BSD license is that the latter omits the non-endorsement clause.
MIT License
The MIT License is the shortest and probably broadest of all the popular open-source licenses. Its terms are very loose and more permissive than most other licenses. The basic provision of the license (minus the information that it is provided without warranty, which comprises the final paragraph) is as follows:
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Softwareâ€), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
What this means is that:
- You can use, copy and modify the software however you want. No one can prevent you from using it on any project, from copying it however many times you want and in whatever format you like, or from changing it however you want.
- You can give the software away for free or sell it. You have no restrictions on how to distribute it.
- The only restriction is that it be accompanied by the license agreement.
The MIT License is the least restrictive license out there. It basically says that anyone can do whatever they want with the licensed material, as long as it’s accompanied by the license.
Apache License
The Apache License, Version 2.0, grants a number of rights to users. These rights can be applied to both copyrights and patents. Because some licenses can be applied only to copyrights and not patents, this flexibility would be an obvious factor in a patent developer’s choice of license (read this article on How Stuff Works for an explanation of the difference).
Here are some more details on what the Apache License allows:
- Rights are perpetual.
Once they’ve been granted, you can continue to use them forever.
- Rights are worldwide.
If the rights are granted in one country, then they’re granted in all countries. For example, if you’re in the US and the original license was granted in India, you’re not prevented from using the code under the license.
- Rights are granted for no fee or royalty.
Not only will you not be charged any kind of up-front usage fee, but you will not be charged fees on a per-usage or any other basis either.
- Rights are non-exclusive.
You can use the licensed work, and so can anyone else.
- Rights are irrevocable.
No one can take these rights away once they’re granted. In other words, you don’t need to worry that down the road, when you’ve created some awesome derivative of the licensed code, someone will swoop in and say, “Sorry, you can’t use this code anymore.†(A clause in the license states that if you sue someone over patent infringement on anything under this license, then your license is terminated, but that only applies to patented work, and as long as you don’t sue anyone over the work, you won’t have to worry about it.)
Redistributing code also has special requirements, mostly pertaining to giving proper credit to those who have worked on the code and to maintaining the same license.
Creative Commons
Creative Commons (CC) licenses aren’t quite open-source licenses, but they are commonly used for design projects. A wide variety of CC licenses is available, each granting certain rights. A CC license has four basic parts, which can be enacted individually or in combination. Here’s an overview of the parts:
- Attribution
The author must be attributed as the creator of the work. Beyond that, the work can be modified, distributed, copied and otherwise used.
- Share Alike
The work can be modified, distributed and so forth, but only under the same CC license.
- Non-Commercial
The work can be modified, distributed and so on, but not for commercial purposes. The language about what constitutes “commercial†is a bit vague (no express definition is provided), so you may want to clarify this in your own projects. For example, some might interpret “non-commercial†as simply meaning that you can’t sell the work. Others might take it to mean that you can’t even put the work on a website that has advertising. Still others might consider something is “commercial†only if it makes a profit.
- No Derivative Works
This means you can copy and distribute the licensed work, but you can’t modify it in any way or create work based on the original.
As mentioned, these parts of the CC license terms can be combined. The most restrictive license would be the “Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives†license, which means that you can freely share the work, but not change it or charge for it, and you must attribute it to the creator. This is a good license to get your work out there but still maintain more or less complete control over how it is used. The least restrictive would be the “Attribution†license, which means that as long as people credit you, they can do whatever they like with the work.
CC licenses are used more for design work than development, but nothing bars you from using it for the latter. Just be aware of exactly what is and is not covered under each part.
Further Resources
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© Cameron Chapman for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | 44 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
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View original post found on Smashing Magazine Feed authored by Smashing Editorial
March 12th, 2010 — ajax, ui
Yes, this is another round-up of fresh and useful Javascript techniques, tools and resources. But don’t close the tab yet, as you might find this one very useful. In this selection we present calendars, forms, buttons, navigation, debugging, optimization and compatibility tables as well as handy resources and tools. We also cover various jQuery-plugins that will help you extend the functionality of your website and improve user experience with ready components or coding solutions.
The last section also covers a number of useful educational resources such as a compilation of useful JavaScript coding practices, a detailed comparison of JavaScript frameworks and general JavaScript programming conventions. We are looking forward to your feedback.
You may be interested in the following related posts:
[By the way: The network tab (on the top of the page) is updated several times a day. It features manually selected articles from the best web design blogs!]
Calendars and Timelines
jDigiClock – Digital Clock (HTC Hero inspired)
jDigiClock is a jQuery plugin inspired from HTC Hero Clock Widget.
jQuery Sliding Clock v1.1
jQuery transpearant Slider clock with CSS sprites.
Date / Time Picker
Note that this control is not designed to work in IE6; although it will function correctly in most cases, the positioning of the calendar may be way off depending on how your page is styled.
JavaScript Debugging and Validation Tools
Venkman JavaScript Debugger project page
Venkman is the code name for Mozilla’s JavaScript Debugger. Venkman aims to provide a powerful JavaScript debugging environment for Gecko-based browsers namely Firefox 3.x, the Netscape 7.x series of browsers, Netscape 9.x series, Mozilla Seamonkey 1.x and Mozilla Seamonkey 2.x. It does not include Gecko-based browsers such as K-Meleon 1.x, Galeon 2.x and Netscape 8.x. The debugger is available as an add-on package in XPI format. Venkman JavaScript Debugger has been provided as part of the Mozilla install distribution since October 3rd 2001.
CompanionJS
Companion.JS (pronounced Companion dot JS or CJS) is a Javascript debugger for IE.
How to Test your JavaScript Code with QUnit
QUnit is a powerful JavaScript unit testing framework that helps you to debug code. It’s written by members of the jQuery team, and is the official test suite for jQuery. But QUnit is general enough to test any regular JavaScript code, and it’s even able to test server-side JavaScript via some JavaScript engine like Rhino or V8.
JS Bin – Collaborative JavaScript Debugging
JS Bin is an open source collaborative JavaScript debugging tool.
Forms, Buttons & Navigation
Making a Google Wave History Slider
Here is shown how to create a Google Wave-like history slider. Using it will enable visitors to go back and forth in time to view the changes that take place on a comment thread.
Fancy Radio Buttons With jQuery
Creation of 2 mandatory option sets that a user could choose, while hiding off the radio button inputs and using an anchor links to make it a bit more usable.
Creative Button Animations with Sprites and JQuery
Fading hover effect for which the transition is smoothed with JavaScript, using jQuery library.
Password (un)Masking
JavaScript jQuery that toggles the masking and unmasking of the password field.
jQuery MagicLine Navigation
These “sliding†style navigation bars have been around a while, and turns out it’s really pretty darn easy. Here are put two examples together.
Fixed Fade Out Menu: A CSS and jQuery Tutorial
The aim is to have a fixed navigation that follows the user when he scrolls, and only subtly showing itself by fading out and becoming almost transparent. When the user hovers over it, the menu then becomes opaque again. Inside of the navigation we will have some links, a search input and a top and bottom button that let the user navigate to the top or the bottom of the page.
jQuery plugin: Simplest Twitter-like dynamic character count for textareas and input fields
The best way to explain what this plugin does is to mention Twitter. Twitter posts are limited to 140 characters. While typing the Twitter post there is this always present information about how many characters the users have before reaching the limit. The information is not only provided merely by displaying a number, there are different colors applied to certain stages to notify the user about the status.
Sliding Labels v2
Form label keeping the label inline, but sliding it off to the left rather than going away on click.
Ketchup Plugin
Ketchup is a slim jQuery Plugin that validates your forms. It aims to be very flexible and extendable for its appearance and functionality.
Layout tools
jQuery {css}designerGrid Plugin
{css} designerGrid is A jQuery Plugin developed for website interface developers who use the grid system of layout. {css} designerGrid is intended to assist these developers with CSS prototyping.
css-template-layout
JavaScript (jQuery) implementation of the CSS Template Layout Module
How to create a fluid grid with jQuery
Grid-based layout is probably the more preferred way to style up a webpage to give it more magazine-like look and feel. This tutorial is about how to use CSS and Javascript to create a fluid grid-based layout (See demo here). The algorithm/procedure used in this tutorial is very simple and straightforward. There are more advanced algorithms out there which can handle multiple scenarios. But the purpose is to understand the basic logic on how to create such layout. So here it goes…
closure-templates
Closure Templates are a client- and server-side templating system that helps you dynamically build reusable HTML and UI elements. They are easy to learn and customizable to fit your application’s needs. Closure Templates support JavaScript and Java and use a data model and expression syntax that works for either language. You can also use the built-in message support to easily localize your applications.
Useful jQuery Plugins
TipTip jQuery Plugin
TipTip detects the edges of the browser window and will make sure the tooltip stays within the current window size. As a result the tooltip will adjust itself to be displayed above, below, to the left or to the right of the element with TipTip applied to it, depending on what is necessary to stay within the browser window. TipTip is a very lightweight and intelligent custom tooltip jQuery plugin. It uses ZERO images and is completely customizable via CSS. It’s also only 3.5kb minified!
jQuery Roundabout
Roundabout is a jQuery plugin that converts a structure of static HTML elements into a highly customizable turntable-like interactive area. (And now, not just turntables, but many shapes!)
jParse – jQuery XML Parse Plugin
jParse is a jQuery plugin that allows you to parse XML that was fetched with the jQuery .ajax method (making it fully customizable).
jQuery Quicksand plugin
Reorder and filter items with a nice shuffling animation.
typeQuery, change website typography with jquery
typeQuery gives the flexibility to change the font-family for everything you define with class, id, or tag, this example is referring to the selected item on a select object with id=â€tag†and the font-family value at select object with id=â€familyâ€: $($("#tag").val()).css("font-family", $("#family").val());
Flip! A jQuery plugin v0.9.9
Flip is a jQuery plugin that will flip easily your elements in four directions.
Data Encryption With JavaScript: jCryption
jCryption is a jQuery plugin for encrypting POST/GET data submitted by forms. It uses public-key algorithm of RSA for the encryption & has a PHP file for handling the decryption of data.
Minimalist jQuery: 11 useful plugins under 4K
jQuery makes our lives easier. So much so that it’s tempting to use it all the time, inadvertently slowing our page load times (cue YSlow and Hammerhead). Combining, compressing, and delivering scripts at the end of your page helps in the HTTP request department. On the file size front, below are jQuery plugins that give solid bang for your performance buck.
Undo/Redo in jQuery
An easy-to-use plugin for adding undo/redo capabilities to a jQuery application. It is based loosely on the Objective-C/Cocoa way of doing things.
editease
editEase – jQuery CMS | no fuss, no database, no worries
jsHub
jsHub is a single piece of JavaScript (a “tagâ€) that can handle reading different sorts of page information and then send them to many different vendors’ products. One piece of code to send to Google Analytics, Omniture SiteCatalyst, WebTrends and Mixpanel. Instead of one piece of JavaScript per vendor, jsHub has a single piece of code (the “hubâ€) and plugins that know how to translate into the required wire protocol for each vendor. Vendors only maintain the plugin for their product.
Educational JavaScript Resources and Tutorials
Caffeinated Simpleton
JavaScript is an amazing little language, but it’s got some quirks that turn a lot of people off. One of those quirks is this, and how it’s not necessarily what you expect it to be. this isn’t that complicated, but there are very few explanations of how it works on the internet. This article is an attempt to explain how this works and how to use it properly.
What You Need To Know About JavaScript Scope
This article discusses how JavaScript handles scope and how various JavaScript libraries provide methods for dealing with it and how they smooth out a few bumps. We’ll also look at how you can get back to basics and do some interesting scope wrangling without a library, a useful approach if you’re writing code that needs to stand alone.
Learning Advanced JavaScript
A very nice tutorial to learn JavaScript, containing code and discussion from the upcoming book Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja by John Resig.
Highlight search terms automagically with JavaScript and mark
Script surrounding the search term(s) with the mark element rather than a span, although the class searchword is retained in case you want to style these marks differently from others. In the CSS, the rule article mark is just added to turn it a gentle shade of pink.
10 Really Helpful Traversing Functions in jQuery
With jQuery, selecting HTML elements is laughably easy. But at times, we may wish to further refine the selection, which can be a hassle when the HTML structure is complicated. In this tutorial, we’ll explore ten ways that we can refine and extend a set of wrapped elements that we wish to operate upon.
Using keyboard shortcuts in Javascript
If you want to enhance your web app, Javascript keyboards shortcuts is definitely something to consider. In this article, you’ll learn to use JS keyboard shortcuts, with and without the JQuery framework.
Code Conventions for the JavaScript Programming Language
This is a set of coding conventions and rules for use in JavaScript programming.
jQuery – Select element cheat sheet
This cheat sheet helps you to find the index of a selected option, set the selected option by value, set the selected option by text, insert a new option before or after another and get the text or value of the selected option.
Compare JavaScript frameworks
Modern Web sites and Web applications tend to rely quite heavily on client-side JavaScript to provide rich interactivity, particularly through the advent of asynchronous HTTP requests that do not require page refreshes to return data or responses from a server-side script or database system. In this article, you will discover how JavaScript frameworks make it easier and faster to create highly interactive and responsive Web sites and Web applications.
Park your Horse, Code Cowboy: Professional JavaScript Workflows, Part 1
In this series, we’ll talk about tools & techniques you can use to cover those No’s, and cut a lot of strife & embarrassment from your JavaScript experience.
JavaScript Reference examples (example source code)
JavaScript Reference examples, organized by Objects, Properties, Methods & Collections. Some Event Handlers Reference are also available.
JavaScript best practices
A compilation of best practices and good advice I’ve amassed over the years, much of it learnt the hard way (experimentation and suchlike). Take the advice below to heart and keep it in a part of your brain that has a quick access route so you can apply it without thinking about it. I am sure you will find things to disagree with, and that is a good thing – you should question what you read, and strive to find better solutions. However, I have found that following these principles has made me a more effective developer and allowed other developers to build upon my work more easily.
wtfjs
JavaScript is a language we love despite it giving us so much to hate. This is a collection of those very special irregularities, inconstancies and just plain painfully unintuitive moments for the language of the web.
Related Posts
You may be interested in the following related posts:
Poll
What programming language should we cover in next round-up?surveys
© Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | 63 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: AJAX, javascript, jquery
View original post found on Ajaxian » Front Page authored by Michael Mahemoff
March 10th, 2010 — fun, iPhone
Harmony is a new drawing tool, a HTML5/Canvas experiment with great potential. It provides some unique brush styles, and can produce some great-looking charcoal pencil style sketches, among other things. Better to try it out than explain it in words.
Creator Mr. Doob (Richard Cabello) explains how he used Canvas to make it darker the more you draw over it:
The whole thing is quite modular so I can keep adding more brush styles whenever I get inspired. During the process I found out that, for some reason (apparently lack of hardware acceleration), Firefox and Opera do not support context.globalCompositeOperation = ‘darker’. This was on the HTML5 spec before but got removed. Just so you know what I’m talking about, this is like the “multiply” blending in Photoshop. Webkit does support it tho. I hope they put it back on the specs and all browsers support it.
You can also save images using data URI encoding.
As it works on webkit, he made sure it worked on the mobile Android and iPhone browsers. No multi-touch as yet, but the touch UI still makes a nice input mechanism.
(Thanks FND)
