All posts tagged ‘oscon’

File Under: Databases, Other
Jul
23
2010

Big Data in the Deep Freeze: John Jacobsen of IceCube

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John Jacobsen works for the IceCube telescope project, the world’s largest neutrino detector, located at the South Pole. The project’s mission is to search for the radioactive sub-atomic particles that have been generated by violent astrophysical events: “exploding stars, gamma ray bursts, and cataclysmic phenomena involving black holes and neutron stars,” according to the project website.

Jacobsen is one of the people in charge of handling the massive amounts of data collected by IceCube. In the video, shot this week at the O’Reilly OSCON 2010 conference in Portland, Oregon, John explains how they collect a terabyte of raw data per hour, then send everything to IceCube’s remote research and backup facilities using a finicky satellite hook-up.

Antarctica is one of the least accommodating places on Earth to perform scientific research with computers. It’s the driest spot on the planet — atmospheric humidity hovers around zero — and bursts of static electricity threaten the integrity of IceCube’s data stores. The lack of humidity causes the server clusters’ cooling systems to break down. And if something fails, a spare might take six months to arrive.

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File Under: JavaScript
Jul
22
2010

Video: jQuery Gurus Talk About Mobile, the Future

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Here’s a short video about the future of jQuery, our favorite JavaScript library for creating rich, animated site interactions.

The interviewees are Mike Hostelter and Jonathan Stark, co-founders of appendTo, a consulting company that trains and supports jQuery programmers. The video was shot this week at O’Reilly OSCON 2010, taking place in Portland, Oregon through Friday.

In the interview, they talk a little bit about what’s next for the jQuery Core group — currently, jQuery creator John Resig is auditing mobile browsers to build more mobile features into jQuery, making it easier for JavaScript developers to make HTML5 iPad and smartphone web apps that are more “appy.” Also, there ultimately won’t be a separate pack for mobiles and desktops — the future of jQuery is one code library that works on all browsers and all devices.

See other OSCON 2010 videos on O’Reilly’s YouTube channel.

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File Under: Events
Aug
4
2008

100 Open Source Presentations From OSCon

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OSCon Open Source ConventionNow you can attend OSCon for free. Well, sort of. Book publisher and conference organizer O’Reilly has shared over 100 presentations from the July conference. Some speakers did not share their presentations (at an open source conference? really?), but it appears most did.

Some development topics to check out:

  • Developers vs. Designers (PDF) has great history, even if you don’t think Java is the answer.
  • Even Faster Web Sites (PPT) gives some great tips to improve the performance of your site.
  • Hack this app (PDF) is technical, but a mandatory reading for PHP developers.
  • How to be Normal is a tough thing for a geek to achieve. Luckily, Mike Hillyer was talking about databases.

You down with ODP?

Most of the presentations are downloadable in some sort of slide format (as opposed to a web page). As I glanced through, I was surprised to see more Powerpoint (PPT) than the open document presentation (ODP) format. Strange, for an OS conference.

My tally shows that 19 supplied the Microsoft format, while 12 were ODP. I’m sure it’s a coincidence that Microsoft sponsored the presentation files page. Of course, PPT and ODP were both blown out of the water by another open format, PDF. About 70% of the downloadable presentations used Adobe’s format.

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File Under: Events, Web Basics
Aug
1
2007

Open or Closed? Jimmy Wales Discusses the Future of Search

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Here’s an interesting video from last week’s O’Reilly Open Source Convention.

It’s Wikipedia and Wikia co-founder Jimmy Wales talking about the future of the search engine. Wales’ newest project is Search Wikia, a project that aims to use open-source software and development methods to build a search product that improves upon the current offerings from players big and small.

Continue Reading “Open or Closed? Jimmy Wales Discusses the Future of Search” »

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File Under: Events
Jul
24
2007

Track Open-Source Apps With Ohloh

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Ohloh

I was just turned on to Ohloh.net, an awesome directory of active open-source software projects. It’s a community site more than it is a searchable directory, though it functions just as well if you’re looking for details about a particular free software project.

Every application in the directory has a landing page that offers a short description, a list of licenses used and a summary of the program’s vital info — what language it’s written in, advantages and possible licensing conflicts are listed. Check out Firefox‘s page. Also, here’s Adium.

Continue Reading “Track Open-Source Apps With Ohloh” »

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File Under: Events
Jul
24
2007

OSCON Report: Why Mozilla Matters

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Oscon_flag
The morning’s executive briefing sessions are underway here at OSCON. Tim O’Reilly just led a discussion on stage about Firefox add-ons — what they’ve achieved, how the open source model has shaped their development and what they contribute to the web.

Sitting on the panel were Mozilla‘s Mike Shaver, who oversees the Firefox extension developer community, as well as two of the ecosystem’s most successful developers in terms of sheer user numbers: AllPeers CTO Matthew Gertner and StumbleUpon‘s Garrett Camp.

One of Tim’s first questions was a biggie: Why does Firefox’s
performance suffer when I install extensions? Shaver handled that one,
explaining that the browser’s architecture lets developers interact
with any of the services within Firefox. Ultimately, it’s a trade off.
Developers get the infinite access which allows them to shape the user
experience of the browser, but that sometimes results in a performance
hit.

Continue Reading “OSCON Report: Why Mozilla Matters” »

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File Under: Events
Jul
23
2007

Alpha Geeks of Open-Source Converge at OSCON

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Oscon_logo
All things open-source are on the agenda at O’Reilly’s ninth annual Open-Source Convention, which runs July 24-27 in Portland, Oregon.

Over 2,500 attendees are expected at the 2007 edition of OSCON. As always, we’ll see the usual tutorials and break-out sessions for programmers, designers, security experts and the like, but there will also be a healthy amount of debate about where open-source is headed and what issues it’s currently facing both as a model and as a philosophy. Some would argue that open-source lives on in every bit of technology we touch — from our set-top boxes and our web browsers to online services like Wikipedia and Flickr. Others would argue that it’s under a bigger threat than ever from patent threats and money-minded opportunists.

The debates begin in earnest on Tuesday with the O’Reilly Radar executive briefing sessions. We’ll be there to bring you the session highlights, as well as all of the important announcements. Chances are, we’ll also see a few applications and hardware innovations that we’ll want to tell you about as well.

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