PHP in App Engine using Java

By admin on May 15, 2009

There is no doubt that support for PHP in Google App Engine (GAME) is the desire of most developers, I included among them. A test is leading to Wishlist appengine, followed by Ruby and Perl. But the second language added to Google App Engine was as Java servlet, however, in an interesting blog post the company Webdigi I know of the existence of an open source project called Quercus, a 100% Java implementation PHP programming language, making it possible to run PHP code in App Engine today.

The main limitation is implemented in PHP that does not support Quercus Datasote of App Engine, however, because if supports memcached, you can use this option to use a common database and running (MySQL for example) any other host in part of the network, develop applications that access that database. The trick is to use memcached as a buffer for all queries to the database.
I am considering moving my blog using WordPress as a CMS for App Engine using Quercus as I read the performance is quite good, although I prefer to try first before moving this blog to this new location. As everyone will know this blog is now hosted on a virtual server in the service of Mosso Rackspace as described for over a month in the post “in the cloud.”

For those who want to try this way to run PHP code in App Engine here the steps that must be followed:

1. Register an account on Google App Engine (if you do not already have one).
2. Download and install the Java SDK from App Engine.
3. Download the sample file to your computer.
4. Edit the file war WEB-INF appengine-web.xml and replace “ phpgae ” the name of your application in EAG. Remember that my application is called phpgae.
5. Upload your application with the following commands (in Ubuntu):

cd ~ / phpwithjava
~ / appengine-java-sdk-1.2.0/bin/appcfg.sh war update

(Assuming you expanded the example in your home directory (~/), and did the same with the SDK for Java EAG).

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Facebook and Academic Performance

By admin on May 10, 2009

Although I have an account on Facebook, I must admit that I hardly use it at most every weekend to check to see that I have received friend requests and accept them, but I must admit that I am an antisocial 2.0, which is not surprise because I’ve been antisocial from a my early childhood. But something that called my attention was the discovery of a strong statistical correlation between the use of Facebook and low academic performance. The portal of science news Live Science has published under the title “Facebook users get worst notes in college,” a study conducted by Aryn Karpinski to students at the Ohio State University, reveals that while the students without users Facebook notes are between 3.0 and 3.5 GPA (Grade Point Average), which do not use the Facebook service obtained letters between 3.5 and 4.0 GPA. Furthermore the study also revealed that while Facebook users spend only between 1 and 5 hours a week to study, those who do not use the popular social network study of 11 to 15 hours per week.

Although Karpinski is very careful to say that correlation does not imply causation, it is obvious that you are doing a lot of time studying anything less likely to get least qualifications, in this case Facebook is one of the factors distracting the university and not “factor “that we should blame the low notes. But the study also reveals that students who spend more time on extracurricular activities, the Facebook is usually very popular. Another thing that the study also clearly shows is that the more time gets better grades, which is merely a statistical confirmation of what we all suspected.

Anyway, if you have Facebook and they leave thinking you are doing because they get low grades, because it uses the easy way out, it may be that these low grades due to a large number of external and internal factors. The first thing you need is to implement a system of check & balance in your life, get clear and realistic goals, evaluate whether you have met every day and correcting course when you see these off the road. Because you do not need to be a genius to get good grades, it only takes discipline, perseverance and courage.

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The web needs a new business model

By admin on May 5, 2009

In an interesting article titled “The economics of it for free” by Chris Anderson in The Wall Street Journal disscusing the implications of this global economic crisis on the web and the prevalent business model that seeks a wider audience and reputation, with the idea of being able to sell the company in the future.
1. Have a great idea.
2. Seeking investors to take the idea to the market ideally free.
3. If the idea proves popular, look for more investors to make big business.
4. Repeat the process until the idea is bought by a large company.

In the current economic environment, where venture capitalists have no money to invest, and large enterprises are struggling to mantenerce alive and do not consider any new purchase, the model obviously does not work. Furthermore, the classic model of an ad, has proven that does not generate enough income, then basically it can match the right ad to the visitor to a specific website is still an outstanding issue of contextual advertising, as this is focused on the contents of the site where the ad appears, but not in the profile of the user who accesses the site. This is why Facebook has such a conversion rate much lower than other websites.

The other alternative is freemium system, which is offering a free basic service and to generate enough interest that a group of customers who are willing to pay for it. One case used to illustrate the model freemium was to Tapulous, a video game that has produced the game Tap Tap Revenge for iPhone, which has a free version and paid extra to offer that, is not free. However this model does not apply to any application, otherwise it is plausible that Google is having trouble convincing your users to change the free version of the premium.

As Anderson clearly states in his article, in an economy that is shrinking, the best price is always $ 0, plus cable and satellite companies have canceled many basic services, because users now watch video over the web for free through portals such as Hulu. Similarly many have canceled their home phone line to use the VoIP service Skype. Powerful laptops are no longer sold as before, and the economic netbooks have been sold in over this last holiday season. That is what free or cheap queen as expected in this economy is in recession, but from the standpoint of the companies offering the service is important to achieve a cash flow that can pay the bills and get out seeking new investors and is not an option.

We appear to door to see a new business model on the web, we still do not know what, but definitely focused on getting a cash flow that allows to operate the service and Twitter is probably the one at the pattern of how might solve the financing model of the Startup, Twitter if you do not have to close their doors. What is clear is that current business models were anachronistic in the present circumstances.

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Is the blogosphere dying?

By admin on May 2, 2009

Well according to Paul Boutin, in an article in Wired, as blogs are already dead and the Murderers have been Twitter, Flickr and Facebook. In his article, we recommend not to start a new blog and if we have a recommended stop. He claims that due to the influx of professionals to the blogosphere, there is no space for amateur writers, who want to communicate their ideas and use a blog as a means of expression. To support its argument that the Top 10 of Technorati, a blog is not a single author, on the contrary these are institutional blogs, and in many cases could be considered that are online journals that can produce up to 30 days post quality, enough for the average blogger, Suffocate get traffic. Also mention the fact that Jason Calacanis, one of the first bloggers blog has officially closed with these words: “blog has become something so big, so impersonal, and lost the intimacy that drew me to him,” Calacanis actually only keeps your Twitter account and a newsletter distributed by subscription.

Does this mean that we should leave Blogger, then no. As you point out Mathew Ingram and Seamus McCauley on their blogs, is the classic position to bring something new to overcome the former, and it was thought that radio could end up with books, TV with radio, or more recently the Internet with the TV , but the fact is that there are simply more supply competing for public attention. Furthermore, as Ingram points out, the blogosphere is not for everyone, it never was more, is for those who wish to write, those who do not want to do now is simply because Twitter or Facebook, and perhaps for millions of human beings that is sufficient, but there will always be a group who want to continue writing and speaking out through their blogs, because otherwise would not do in conventional media. McCauley said that even Boutin’s article is only intended to drive traffic to scandal, I do not think so, simply states a fact that this is happening and the lack of progressive bloggers to maintain their active blogs, statistics show it is only a small percentage of blogs are updated weekly, is not an easy task by the way, keep this blog consume many hours of my free time and more free time that is reduced because it needs more work. It is precisely because of the ease to update Twitter and Facebook that have had this sudden boom.

A blog is definitely half Elitisto, is not for everyone (or should I say is not for fools) out of jokes is not easy to blog or read, or write, and not for the masses of literature, all trying to read one book per month is simply a nonsense, but there will always be writers and readers always eager to discuss either oppose or support by adding a new point of view, to a post. This is something that lacks for example conventional media, the interactivity of blogs is still and by far the most important contributions to our culture.

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Trouble in the valley.

By admin on April 29, 2009

The investment fund organized a meeting yesterday, where he invited entrepreneurs and chief executives of companies in its investment portfolio. Attendees were greeted by a beautiful image of a gravestone with an inscription that read “RIP: Good Times” (RIP = Rest In Peace, or rest in peace), as mentioned in Gigaom. The image shown on the right is taken from Gigaom and is a dramatization of the picture you saw those attending the meeting.

The meeting was addressed by at least four speakers, including a brief introduction by Mike Moritiz. Another speaker was Doug Leone. Still no details on who the other two speakers. A person who deals with public market investments Sequoia said that he had talked to the startups. The message delivered to attendees is that things could be much worse than people think, and a recession will be longer than many analysts had predicted. To give a historical perspective, Sequoia made a similar meeting before the last of the dotcom bubble, which seriously affects the sector.

They want the companies to reduce their costs (euphemism used to fire staff) and focus on determining how to survive and emerge at the other end of the decline of the market, which could last years. The speakers were through each functional area of the company and told the company representatives who participated in the meeting, how to reduce their costs. By holding this special meeting, Sequoia is telling companies that their strategies for survival as they should prioritize their spending and find ways to survive the current problems facing the market.

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The fate of internet startups

By admin on April 22, 2009

Undoubtedly the current economic crisis impacting the financial sector is investing in new businesses (startups) on the web, just on the topic in the blog “A VC (VC = Venture Capital), author Fred Wilson says some of his friends as investors are changing their way of deciding which projects to invest in, and apparently now prefer startups that have a commercial product to sell, preferably geared to the business sector by offering a rate of return on investment found In this way companies can be offered through a traditional sales team with a clear argument as how to enhance the benefits the new service or how much you save compared to current costs. Wilson says it is more a lack of patience of many investors, because nobody wants to wait more than six months to see revenues in the projects in which invest.

As mentioned by Wilson, the current model to give everything for free on Internet, what he calls “freemium” is a contraction of the word free (free) and premium (high quality), is currently under pressure as a result of the current financial crisis because money is scarce, and nobody is willing to risk the same way as before, this can lead to a redefinition of services currently exist. And in the long run will mean less dynamism and innovation on the Web in the coming months or even years.

On the other hand Wilson mentions that a business model with a payment service from the beginning, it could mean for small businesses that are behind the new business a heavy burden on their payrolls, to be forced to hire a sales team, not is cheap. From that perspective, Wilson said that a free model at the start to win users and quickly get a feedback from them to improve the service and then offer a service as a paid upgrade to a premium service, remains the best option for small businesses.

Besides the companies “me too”, trying to copy the success of another, simply evaporated veran its funding sources, ie in the coming months we will disappear as such some of the services they offer streaming video (YouTube clones) . The reason for the closure of small imitators is simple, your business model is based on betting that the long-term video-streaming market will grow enough so that their participation will report lower enough traffic to be profitable, since it does not possess to offer any real innovation, and not being able to increase its market share quickly and steadily, simply will be forced to close as a result of the go out of venture capital that are their main source of funding.

It will be interesting to see how well you compare Zoho to Google Docs, as they both offer the same services, the difference is simply the size and ability to be in the market enough, Google has in its favor a diversified source of income and liquid, however Zoho relies on selling your product and venture capital that is raised, which is now scarce.

I wonder what would happen if Blog platforms like Blogger, WordPress.com and LiveJournal, decided to begin charging an annual membership, even $ 5. On the one hand junk blogs that are only links and copy / paste simply disappear at a stroke, the current method of using bots to create thousands of redundant information with blogs and put links and ads there would become economically unfeasible for most hacker. Or if, for example Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo Mail, decided to charge an annual subscription, the number of accounts also reduce ghosts, as well those who really need a paid email tasty.

All companies that currently offer a free service in exchange for advertising revenue that would offset the loss of advertising because of the recession that soon will face, and thus the quality of service we receive is not affected. But the million dollar question would be how to pay for any of a very small amount of the average Internet user who believes that everything is free and should be free on the net.

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Fixing Windows with Linux

By admin on April 19, 2009

Finding utilities to repair a Windows 2003 partition after a hard reboot, I found an interesting Linux LiveCD called Trinity Rescue Kit (TRK) to boot from a USB flash disk, a CD / DVD or on the network using the protocol PXE allows repair a damaged Windows partition, or make a copy of the files to another device either locally or across the network (even given the option to clone an entire partition over the network). Additional Features Included in TRK are resetting the password of the administrator of a Windows viruses detected in all partitions, resize the partition size windows and recover deleted partitions.

In sum TRK Switzerland is an interesting knife if you want to repair a windows partition (2000/2003/XP/Vista). I have used the stable version 3.2-build-279, a 3.3 Release Candidate but I do not recommend the use especially if you still want to recover important data, use the latest stable version. In case you need to repair a Vista partition will have no choice but to use the 3.3 RC, which is still in beta.

TRK can download from this mirror.

Then boot the TRK starts in mode without root password, but hopes to find a DHCP server if you do not have one in your network (this is usual in a data center), script must use the “Setipa” to set the network and gain access to the Internet. To mount all partitions on the system in which it must use the boot script mountallfs “, but before using any tool to repair a partition must be sure that there are no partitions mounted, but can damage the data in them.

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Fight for the OS of the future

By admin on April 15, 2009

There is no doubt that this economic crisis redraw the landscape of technology, a proof of this is that netbooks have captured the scene and are the protagonists of the ICT sector. This has occurred primarily for two reasons, first is the terrible economic situation has limited the spending power of most households and the other is the arrival of Intel Atom chip, which has allowed the great majority of assemblers of computers offer their own versions of netbooks.

An unexpected result for everyone, including Microsoft, is that for the first time in its history, the market is not looking for a faster processor, a proof of this is the cool reception by the market of the new desktop processor for Intel Core i7 . What the market is now looking machines are lightweight, economical and to enable us to easily enter the Internet, ie the market demand netbooks. Unfortunately for Microsoft, the vast majority of these computers come equipped with the Atom processor N270, which although nominally has two cores and operates at 1.6GHz, it has proved in practice that is too slow to run the new operating system from Microsoft, Windows Vista.

Microsoft has pressured its ally Intel for many years to accelerate the introduction of high-end Atom processor as the Z530, but the higher cost of these nebtooks does not seem to inspire many to the point that even Dell has introduced its new Mini 10v, which is equipped with an N270, as an alternative to more expensive Mini 10, which uses the processor N530.

It is clear that low-end hardware still runs Windows XP Home Edition with some limitations, in fact to run with relative ease, the XP netbooks have taken steroids and this is reflected in their prices. From the perspective of manufacturers of netbooks made little sense to expect that Windows 7 that XP is more agile in this category. After all the main supocisión of engineers designing the next generation of Windows is that this will be a more powerful processor, a sort of tacit acuerto with Intel, which tavés to a new version of Windows to help sell the new generation of high-end processors, which is where Intel brings greater profit. This crisis has broken this pattern and this cracked the much lasting alliance between Intel and Microsoft.

Things have escalated to the point that Intel has developed its own operating system for netbooks called Moblin, a project originally intended to be used as the operating system of smartphones, but due to the turn which took Android (Google OS for smartphones), which now also runs on netbooks, Intel did to refine their plans for Moblin. In this fight to fill the space the OS low-cost netbooks has also entered Canonical with its Ubuntu Remix.

That is why it is not surprising that having been released yesterday (May 19) Moblin v 2.0 beta, free to download and clearly intended to create a community to develop applications for this platform. Hours later a video appeared on YouTube in which leaves Doug Anson, one of the strategists of Dell technology, showing a Dell Mini Cupcake 10v running Android, in addition to two others of the same model netbooks running Ubuntu and Ubuntu Remix.

The intention is clear from my point of view, long computer assemblers have lived in the shadow of two giants, Intel and Microsoft. One gave them the hardware and software. Now that Microsoft’s position has been weakened and even Intel is seeking to develop an OS optimized to further promote the use of its Atom chip. Dell does not mean that you accept its OS to blindfold gift, after all do know that Dell will continue to rely on Intel as its sole source of processors, in addition to back Android in netbooks Atom processor enables even a future when the users feel comfortable with the surroundings change to another platform such as ARM, which no longer depend on either Intel.

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Obama, recession and Open Source

By admin on April 10, 2009

In an article by Ryan Paul, which appeared at ArsTechnica, it says that Scott McNealy, co-founder and former CEO of Sun Microsystems, said he has been contacted by members of the Obama administration, to assist in developing a plan that would aim to reduce ICT costs in various areas of the U.S. government, federal and local levels. Through the use of Open Source, this would be a way to cope with the current budget crisis and do more with less. There are several ways in which the federal government can save by using open source, such large deployments of Linux PCs in schools, which has proven quite effective in the past. And there are examples such as the French parliament, which could be followed in the American public. In addition to cost reduction, which is a priority at this time, the use of open source technologies, including improved interoperability with other technologies, giving the department greater flexibility when ICT use and manage their software.

But the doubts of the Open Source community are not related to the true intentions of the new Obama administration, who has shown genuine interest in Open Source, but the person who is designated to help redesign the policies of the federal government . Since McNealy has been characterized by temperal and his stormy relationship with the Open Source community. Even some critics have said that asking McNealy write a document of guidelines on the adoption of the Open Software in Government, is like asking Dick Cheney to write a paper on guidelines for government transparency. Certainly does not seem the best option for advice.

But then I ask for advice, Paul Ryan, suggests Sue C. Payton, the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition. She was the author of a paper proposing a roadmap for the deployment of Open Source technologies in the Defense Ministry, while he was a commissioner of the sub-secretariat of defense in 2006. Obviously someone who knows the state and the open source is much more advisable for someone who has had a love / hate with the Open Source such as Scott McNealy.

However, if the plan is carried out, even partially, would be the model for a large amount of government in the world, with perhaps one of the most important customers of Microsoft closed down many of its accounts and it is also a large group of important customers, composed mostly by foreign governments. If Microsoft knew of these conversations, it is easy to understand why they have been so worried in Redmond recently and placed the Open Source as a major threat to its business model. Apparently the recession is not the end of the Open Source as many have been announced, but perhaps the catalyst to leave research and large data centers, to make your entrance to mass consumer market.

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Google trying to date Twitter!

By admin on April 3, 2009

At TechCrunch, Michael Arrington has endorsed the technology gossip at the time, the possible acquisition of Twitter from Google. It should be mentioned that this is still a rumor, but apparently has begun to gain strength to the point that the denials have begun among bloggers, for example Henry Blodget at Silicon Alley Insider says again that Arrington has been wrong and there is no intention Google to acquire in Twitter. The same opinion Robert Scoble on his blog Scobleizer, which cited two sources close to Google that you have said that no talks to acquire Twitter today.

Remember that the post of Arrington was released yesterday, April 2, so clearly did not intend to be a joke. But why Arrington arriegaría credibility endorsing such a rumor, “a hypothesis that Arrington is my wish that someone acquires Twitter, either Google or Micrsoft, many analysts believe it would be a mistake to buy Micrsoft in Twitter Currently, at least that is what Mary-Jo Foley said in his post “Microsoft should not buy Twitter” (Translation: Microsoft should not buy Twitter).

Arrington fertilizer on the other hand the theory with some evidence of the fact that Evan Williams and Isaac “Biz” Stone founders of Blogger and Twitter, it could again shut down business with Google. But Arrington did not mention anything to the fact that Google is now allowing some of its advertisers to make a scrolling ads on the AdSense network for the last 5 tweets, one of which is making use of this facility is to Intuit promote your Twitter network of TurboTax. Find this information in the news portal AdvertisingAge advertising.

That means Google has a reason to buy Twitter, has discovered how to make money with such a social network, something that no one but Google can do for now. The simple answer is to try to push up the price. Unfortunately, the economy is so bad that if this deal does not close, Twitter could be left without funds to operate very soon, however appears to be a calculated risk is taken by people from Twitter to get the best deal possible part of Google.

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