Categories
Technology

A Better Broadband Router: Linksys WRT54GL and the Tomato Firmware

My family has been using Midcontinent Communications for our broadband internet for about three and a half years now, and have had a very good experience with it. About a month ago though, things seemed to really slow down. This was especially noticeable whenever I loaded up a video from YouTube – or any other […]

Categories
Open Source

Thrift: Facebook Open Source Tool

Facebook released some of its home-grown software architecture as open source a few days ago. They’ve called it Thrift, and can be downloaded from their developer site for free. Browsing through Thrift’s whitepaper (PDF), I’m still trying to completely understand it. It appears to provide a consistent way for different programming languages (PHP, Python, Ruby, […]

Categories
Technology

The Year of the Widget

I’ve mentioned my love of widgets in passing, but thought they deserved a little more attention. If you’ve ever used Apple’s Dashboard, the customizable Google Homepage, the Yahoo! Widget Engine, or Windows Vista’s Gadgets, you’re familiar with the idea. If you haven’t tried any of these, widgets are little, single purpose “applications” (if you can […]

Categories
Web Development

MODx: A Different Kind of PHP CMS

Right now I’m in the middle of designing a website for one of the new businesses. It’s work that I enjoy very much, giving me the chance to stretch the creative side of my brain and apply my knowledge of branding, marketing, accessibility, usability, and most recently, search engine optimization. During the initial design round, […]

Categories
Technology

Open Source Software and the Future of Business

Tim O’Reilly is one of those few people who can step back, look at the current state of things, and then predict where it’s all headed. In this cause, the topic is computing, open source software specifically. He recently wrote an article called The Open Source Paradigm Shift, in which he talks about where computer […]