Dude Perfect - Airplane Shot

 

 

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Dude Perfect - Airplane Shot

via YouTube on 5/23/10

Dude Perfect hits a shot out of a plane!

 

 

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SOA Design Patterns

 

 

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SOA Design Patterns

via KnowFree.net Feed Update by mrblue on 5/29/10

The concept of service oriented architecture has long promised visions of agile organizations being able to swap out interfaces and applications as business needs change. SOA also promises incredible developer and IT productivity, with the idea that key services would be candidates for cross-enterprise sharing or reuse. But many organizations' efforts to move to SOA have been mired–by organizational issues, by conflicting vendor messages, and by architectures that may amount to little more than Just a Bunch of Web Services. There's been a lot of confusion in the SOA marketplace about exactly what SOA is, what it's supposed to accomplish, and how an enterprise goes about in making it work.

SOA Design Patterns is a definitive work that offers clarity on the purpose and functioning of service oriented architecture. SOA Design Patterns not only helps the IT practitioner lay the groundwork for a well-functioning SOA effort across the enterprise, but also connects the dots between SOA and the business requirements in a very concrete way. Plus, this book is completely technology agnostic—SOA Design Patterns rightly focuses on infrastructure and architecture, and it doesn't matter whether you're using components of one kind or another, or Java, or .NET, or Web services, or REST-style interfaces.

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Attic Kitchens: Pros and Cons of Cooking in the Rafters

 

 

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Attic Kitchens: Pros and Cons of Cooking in the Rafters

via The Kitchn by Regina Yunghans on 5/27/10

When we spy a kitchen way up in the rafters of a building, we're carried away with romantic notions of the view, the old building it's probably located in, and dinners on the roof. It's no wonder given these beautiful examples:

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Make Reading on your Computer a Pleasure With MartView

 

 

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Make Reading on your Computer a Pleasure With MartView

via MakeUseOf.com by Ryan Dube on 5/28/10

One of the problems I've always had with reading eBooks online is that it just doesn't have the same look and feel of a real book or magazine. When you hold a book in your hands, you can grip the corner of the page and curl it back just as your finishing the last few words on the page, and then quickly toss the page over to the next page so you can continue without pause. This is part of the experience of reading, and it's something that is very hard to give up as you transition to the digital medium of the Internet.

Luckily, there are eBook reader devices that now incorporate an animated sort of "page turning." Those features are awesome, but they don't help you much when you're trying to read an eBook on your computer when you're not mobile. This is why I was very excited to discover an awesome desktop eBook reader called MartView.

MartView is a unique digital reader application for Windows (Mac version available soon) that recreates this "authentic" reading experience. Using this reader, you can also read regular PDF documents as well, such as a free PDF eBook download. You can slowly or quickly turn or bend pages, scroll through documents using a variety of methods and orientations, and much more.

MartView Makes Reading Digital Documents Enjoyable

What I love about the free MartView eBook reader is the design that's very easy on the eyes, and the functionality that really does make you feel like you have ultimate control over the motion of the book and the flow of your reading. Once you download and install the application, it looks like this.

Normally, the top menu bar is hidden, but when you bring your mouse near the top of the screen, it drops down. There are a lot of cool options available for how you'd like to navigate through your eBook. You can simply flip through (my favorite), or you can opt for the standard horizontal or vertical slide formats of typical PDF readers.

In the image below, I've grabbed hold of the lower right corner of the page and I'm turning the page in the example eBook. This shows the page in mid-flip, but you can actually hold it there as you would with a normal book. You can put it back if you want, or continue on to the next page. It's a very cool feeling to have so much control over the motion of the page, and the shading and animation really makes it feel like you're looking at a real book.

Changing views is as easy as clicking on the drop-down menu bar. Here, I've instantly changed the navigation to the vertical slide option. In this format you can use the scroll-bar (or your mouse scroll) to scroll up and down the entire eBook.

Another very cool view is the "thumbnails" view. Rather than sifting through a table of contents to find the page that you're looking for, why not browse a thumbnail of all pages of the eBook? This makes it very easy to find diagrams or images that you want to refer back to but don't remember the exact page.

You can use the MartView reader as a standalone PDF or eBook reader, but it also has the ability to connect through your Internet connection and download from the huge library of free eBooks at the MartView website. You don't need an account, all you need to do is install the reader and you can start downloading free eBooks.

You can also create and upload your own eBooks and store them on the MartView library.

You can create and upload an eBook to the MartView library from a PDF eBook, from a collection of your own personal images, or from an archived collection of images and share your eBook with the entire community.

The upload process is really simple and fast. Just select the file, give it a title that you'll remember easily (and a good category), and upload it to MartView.

The coolest part of MartView, in my opinion, is the library. I love free reading material, and the volumes of free content that you'll find at MartView is seemingly unlimited. There are entire collections of online magazines, sorted into categories like Business & Finance, Computers & Tech and a lot more.

Of course, you aren't limited to downloading and reading MartView eBooks only. You can open up any PDF on your computer or that you download from any other PDF-based eBook site using your MartView reader. Here, I opened a free download of A Tale of Two Cities.

You'll notice that the shading and appearance gives your PDF document the look and feel of a real book. Just start paging through and enjoy your reading experience!

As with many good things, there's a downside. I did notice that MartView is a dog when it comes to memory consumption. It's best used with all other applications shut down and devoting the entire screen to the reading experience. Unless you have some massive memory, I wouldn't advise trying to accomplish much else with your computer while running MartView.

With that said, I really like the software and plan to use it whenever I have some free time to sit back and enjoy an e-magazine or a free eBook.

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Ferrari World, Innovation and Adrenaline in Abu Dhabi

 

 

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Ferrari World, Innovation and Adrenaline in Abu Dhabi

via Freshome.com - Interior Design & Architecture Newsletter by Lavinia on 5/28/10

Ferrari World is a stunning theme park located 30 minutes away from Abu Dhabi, on Yas Island, in United Arab Emirates. When seeing this project of immense proportions, I immediately thought that it has to be in Dubai, but here's a country with more than one opulent and extravagant attractions. According to the official news we found on the Ferrari site: "Ferrari World Abu Dhabi is set to be the world's largest indoor theme park, sitting under a roof designed in the style of a classic double-curve body shell of a Ferrari. There is energy, excitement and passion for the entire family at Ferrari World Abu Dhabi. With over 20 rides and attractions, including the world's fastest roller coaster, Ferrari World is more than a theme park – it is the total Ferrari experience."

The main building's height is 45 m (147.6 ft) and the total surface area of the roof measures 200,000 m² (2,152,782 ft²). These are fascinating figures for a theme park. The Ferrari imprinted logo also has impressive dimensions: 65 m x 48.5 m, said to be the largest ever created. Ferrari World will be open to the public starting October 28, 2010. Can you feel the upcoming thrill?

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HTML 5

 

 

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HTML 5

via BLITZ | Blog by Phil T on 5/26/10

You've heard of HTML 5 by now. Probably the most common new features include the new elements, specifically <video>, <audio>, and <canvas>. Although those are amazing improvements, there are some lesser known features that are worth taking another glance at.

First, be sure to start with the HTML 5 Doctype whenever using these following features.

<!DOCTYPE html>

New Form Types and Attributes

Placeholder – this attribute will display default text inside the input field when not focused. When a user gives the input field focus the text will disappear.

<form>
    <input placeholder="First Name" name="firstname" type="text"  />
    <input type="submit" value="Submit" />
</form>

Autofocus – Gives the input field focus immediately

<form>
    <input name="firstname" type="text" autofocus />
    <input type="submit" value="Submit" />
</form>

New types: number, email, url, and search

While there are a few other types added such as date or number supported by Opera, we'll only take a look at these four.

<form>
    <input type="number" name="num" />
    <input name="email" type="email" />
    <input name="url" type="url" />
    <input name="q" type="search" />
    <input type="submit" value="Submit" />
</form>

One of the coolest features about these new types is that the iPhone will update its keyboard based on the input type.

Number Type displays numeric keyboard

Email type displays email keyboard

URL type displays URL keyboard

Search type displays search keyboard

Like all these new features there are fallback options. For the new types, if a browser doesn't recognize the type it will behave as the "text" type. Additionally, the placeholder and autofocus attributes can be handled through JavaScript for browsers that do not support this feature.

ContentEditable – Allows the text in the element to be editable, similar to a rich text editor

<p contenteditable="true">This is editable text</p>

Custom Attributes (data-*) – allows for adding valid data attributes that will benefit the semantics of the markup

<a data-city="Santa Monica" data-state="CA" href="http://blitzagency.com">BLITZ</a>

Offline Application Caching using Manifest
HTML 5 allows us to cache specific files or assets for offline browsing.
The mime type of the manifest needs to be text/cache-manifest.

First, we must set manifest attribute to our manifest file.

<html manifest="manifest.blitz">

Contents of manifest.blitz:

# This is a comment
CACHE MANIFEST

CACHE:
# these resources are to be cached for offline use
index.html
css/style.css
js/script.js
imgs/logo.png

NETWORK:
# these require the user to be online
login.php
# by using a path, this states all requests to
# resources under the /services directory must
# be fetched from the server
/services

FALLBACK:
# when a resource fails to load from /imgs path,
# backup.html is loaded as a "fallback"
imgs/ backup.html

This tutorial primarily focused on markup features, but HTML 5 has much more to offer.

Further Reading

W3Schools HTML 5 Tag Reference
HTML 5 Editor's Draft

 

 

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