I am a huge fan of Linux. On most counts: code quality, cultural/social, stability, performance and security, I think it is superb. There is no other operating system that I would like to see on my servers. However, there is a huge issue with Linux as a desktop operating system. And it has little to...

Quite probably, you have seen more than a few companies bragging about being ISO 9000 certified. In the marketing materials it is usually presented as a doubtless proof of higher quality. However, what they don’t necessarily want you to know, is that the perception has little to do with the reality. ISO 9000 is a...

The current, OS-X version of XAMPP comes with PEAR but it’s not installed/configured. Here is what you need to do: sudo su - [and type admin password] /Applications/xampp/xamppfiles/lib/php/pear install PEAR /Applications/xampp/xamppfiles/lib/php/pear install Log /Applications/xampp/xamppfiles/lib/php/pear list The last command outputs the list of installed pear modules. Log should be one of them. Once you configure pear...

Let’s admit, any PHP developer, at some point has “debugged” a PHP application by inserting several “echo” statements here and there. It’s easy and quick but it’s by far not the best way. For one, you can not and should not do anything like that on a production server. The last thing users need to...

On the block configuration page, in the “page-specific visibility settings”, enable option three: “Show if the following PHP code returns TRUE (PHP-mode, experts only).” and enter the following code: <?php $bresval = false; if (arg(0) == 'node' && ctype_digit(arg(1))) { $node = node_load(arg(1)); if ($node->type == 'event') { $bresval = true; } } return $bresval;...

Ever wondered about the frequency of a particular tag or tags over time? The SQL query below can quickly mine that information from a Drupal database: select count(*), mons from ( select n.nid,n.changed, t.tid, DATE_FORMAT( FROM_UNIXTIME(n.changed), '%Y%m') mons from node n inner join term_node as t on t.nid=n.nid where t.tid=14769 group by n.nid) as trm_x_node...

You probably know that CeBIT is going full force, right now. As you would expect from a leading IT and telecom trade fair, loads of new interesting solutions were presented. However, one stands out, right away. Not so much with its features but rather by price - $1,500 for a keyboard? And it’s not even...

pru·dent [prood-nt] - careful in providing for the future; Mike Cannon-Brookes of Atlassian recently wrote a wonderful blog post about successful hiring practices. A related, interesting subject is the matter of discipline, often emphasized by HR professionals. Apparently, well-organized individuals are better workers, or so they tell us. Well, we know it is not necessarily...

According to Caucho, you can run Drupal in Java now. Following is the excerpt from Quercus website: “Quercus is Caucho Technology’s 100% Java implementation of PHP 5 released under the Open Source GPL license. Quercus comes with many PHP modules and extensions like PDF, PDO, MySQL, and JSON. Quercus allows for tight integration of Java...

The next Washington, DC, Drupal Meet-up will be on Wednesday, March 14th, at the Science Club (1136 19th Street, NW) at 7pm. You can find more information in Eric’s announcement.

We have all heard about the relaxed corporate atmosphere at Google. Nothing wrong about that. In fact, it’s awesome. However, aparently somebody at Google’s external communications (or whatever the department is called there) thought it was a good idea to share a piece of internal “nerdiness” with the public at large. Recently, they have published...

Adobe (ex-Macromedia) Flash is a core technology of today’s Web. Unfortunately, it got a wrong start back in the days. Many designers sold their souls to the unprecedented opportunities offered by graphical web and forgot that Flash is a complement to HTML, not - a replacement. This confussion ended us in the initial flood of...

BMW gets it. Watch the phenomenal integration of Google Maps and German manufacturer’s navigation system.

Even though Russian is one of the few languages i can speak and I have worked on both the internationalization of Web applications, as well as Java quite a lot, in the past, particular problem of Russian i18N has never come to my attention. That is - until now. Unfortunately, I was unpleasantly surprised as...

Or: how can you install FFMPEG encoder on Linux? How many times have you been annoyed by online videos in different proprietary streaming encodings? Have you looked at the beauty of Youtube, Google Video, Revver etc. with owe? Did you envy the way they accept long list of different encodings, re-encode them into FLV and...