Google Chrome

Google has released a beta version of their web browser. Go and download Google Chrome. You have to see for yourself just how fast it is.

If you'd like to know more about the browser you can check out the Google Chrome Book or the features here.

It will be interesting to see the user adoption trends. Hopefully the combination of Google Chrome and FireFox will equal to at least 50% of the browser usage across the Internet.

CRON Jobs

What are Cron jobs?
What can Cron jobs do?
What are the benefits of Cron jobs?
How can I set up a Cron job?

The answers to all these questions and more in the Newbi: Intro to cron.

My PVR Project - The Beginning

Roger's Cable TV and Bell Satellite TV both offer PVR units with their digital television service. Their packages are price competitively and the promotional deals have almost swayed me to buy a PVR unit.

As I considering these promotional deals I was curious to see if there were any other PVR options available. To my surprise there are plenty of options available. One of the options that I found I really liked because I can use my old PC, which is sitting in storage collecting dust, as the PVR unit.

Using Ubuntu, MythTV and a video capture card I can turn my PC into a PVR.

Here is where my project begins. I'm creating the plan to execute this project and successfully start PVR-ing all the television shows I want to watch.

My PVR Project plan:

1. Buy a video capture card that has a TV port and drivers that support Ubuntu and MythTV


2. Install the new video card


3. Install Ubuntu


4. Install MythTV


5. Start recording TV with my new PVR

I'm sure executing the plan will be a lot more complicated that actually planning out the steps that are required to setup a PVR.

Be sure to watch for the next "My PVR Project" entry. I'll have pictures and a lot more information to share.

Web Tech Talk : Testing your web applications

When it comes to testing web applications there are quite a few tools out there but the really good tools are few and far between.

Lately project are getting to point where they're big enough to required automated testing. After search around the net and trying out tons of software I have found a tools that is very useful.

Selenium IDE

What is Seleniun IDE? Well if you look at the OpenQA site here's what it says about Selenium IDE.

Selenium IDE is an integrated development environment for Selenium tests. It is implemented as a Firefox extension, and allows you to record, edit, and debug tests. Selenium IDE includes the entire Selenium Core, allowing you to easily and quickly record and play back tests in the actual environment that they will run.

Selenium IDE is not only recording tool: it is a complete IDE. You can choose to use its recording capability, or you may edit your scripts by hand. With autocomplete support and the ability to move commands around quickly, Selenium IDE is the ideal environment for creating Selenium tests no matter what style of tests you prefer.

Features:

* Easy record and playback
* Intelligent field selection will use IDs, names, or XPath as needed
* Autocomplete for all common Selenium commands
* Walk through tests
* Debug and set breakpoints
* Save tests as HTML, Ruby scripts, or any other format
* Support for Selenium user-extensions.js file
* Option to automatically assert the title of every page

This is, in my opinion, by far one of the better testing tools available to web developers.

Be sure to try it out. OpenQA : Selenium IDE

OpenID

There's a lot of buzz around the net talking about OpenID.

To be quite honest I haven't hear too much about it other than the fact that you'll use one username and password for all your sites you have an account on.

I'm sure there are many other features and advantages to using OpenID.

Here are a few sites that will help get you up to speed.

http://openid.net/
https://www.myopenid.com/
http://iwantmyopenid.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenID

Mozilla Closing in on Firefox 3

This article from internetnews.com is talking about the release of FireFox 3 alpha release 6.

It seems like just last week I was talking about the release of FireFox 2.

Anyway, Be sure to read up on the new features that will be in the public release. If you're feeling brave then maybe you want to try the alpha release here.

FireFox 2

Normally I'm on the ball when it comes to updating my software. But I've been ignoring the prompt for FireFox 2 update.

Until today.

Today I have updated to FireFox 2 and I'm glad I did. I love the new tabbed browsing features. The integrated spell check is quite the bonus. There are quite a few updates and added features which will definitely come in handy in this new version. You can check out all the updated and added features here.

Now go download and use FireFox 2!