Alan Williamson

Java has brought much in the way of programming advancement within easy reach of developers. Powerful constructs such as multithreading and advance communication are now relatively easy for you to use in your programs. Java has also brought a strong sense of object orientation. The ability to reuse code and not reinvent the wheel each time you program is a great improvement over alternative programming languages. But for a developer to reuse code, the language has to support the mechanisms that make it easy to build complex systems by simply plugging objects together. Java has these mechanisms - the servlet API is no stranger to object reuse. This article outlines the different methods by which servlets can communicate data to one another. This communication promotes the concept of solving a problem only once and then applying the solution to many different areas. ... (more)

How to Create a Gadget for Google Desktop

Alan Williamson's Blog Have you played with Google's Desktop tool? This is basically a strip on the side of your screen that lets you house small applications, called Gadgets. The tool is available for Windows, Linux and Mac so no matter your vice there is a flavour for you. There is a wide variety of Gadgets available, ranging from the usual news tickers and clocks right through to games and even being able to vote if a girl is hot or not! Each gadget is essentially a small Javascript application that is built to a given framework that is provided to by the Google application th... (more)

Amazon S3 and How to Calculate Your Cloud Storage Costs

 Alan Williamson's Blog Amazon announced today they are changing the price for their S3 data storage service. In face of current credit crunch, they are bucking the trend and making their services even cheaper, particuraly for the seriously high volume users. If you are pushing a lot traffic through Amazon S3 then you will notice a small decrease in your monthly bill come the 1st of November. Amazon are not the only service provider offering large data farms. Another great service that we've been using of late is Nirvanix. Granted, they are not as cheap as Amazon, but they do of... (more)

Goodbye Macworld, Apple Bites the Hand That Feeds It

 From Alan Williamson's Blog Another casualty of the economic downturn, or an excuse to pull back on some spending, whatever the reason, Apple has decided it is no longer sponsoring its flag ship trade show, Macworld. TechRadar has the full announcement here. I am not an Apple fan by any stretch of the imagination, over priced, over hyped products, that are more fashion label than substance, but I do know the importance of these 'dog and pony' shows that Apple and Steve Jobs put on to galvanise the very users that do all of the viral marketing for Apple. Free of charge. Apple clai... (more)

Swing Is Swinging Java Out of the Desktop

Over the last few months I have made more than a passing reference to the fact that I personally feel that, in its present state, Java doesn't stand much chance on the desktop against the march of Microsoft's WinForm technology from the .NET Framework. A view, I have discovered, shared by many of you. Before I go on, let me clarify my position here so we are all on the same page. The frameworks currently available to the Java developer from the standard JDK, of course, are AWT and Swing. Naturally we are not talking about other client-side technologies, such as SWT, Thinlets, and... (more)