Monthly Archives: February 2006

Sametime 7.5 rocks!

Posted on February 27, 2006 | 3 comments

The IBM Lotus website has just been updated with more information about Sametime 7.5, the forthcoming major update to the Sametime chat client. I've been using IBM Community Tools internally for a while now, and many of the features are going to make it into Sametime 7.5. I can't wait for the new version. There are plenty of screenshots to whet your appetite.

Technorati tags:

3 Comments

Tagged ,

No longer #1 on Google

Posted on February 24, 2006 | 1 comment

For at least a few days recently, this weblog was the top hit for my name on Google. Today, it is suddenly down to fifth or sixth, and all of the hits above it are unrelated to this Andy Piper. I have no idea how this has happened – but then, I also have no idea how I made the number 1 slot in the first place. Oh well. Ego-surfing back on pause for a while.

1 Comment

Tagged

Google’s latest – Google Page Creator

Posted on February 23, 2006 | Leave a comment

Google Page Creator is an online tool that lets you create static web content. Google will then host it for you at [yourGoogleId].googlepages.com. You get 100Mb of hosting space.

Interesting to see where Google is going with this. Do you want them hosting your content? And how much does this differ from Blogger and other blog hosting sites?

Leave a comment

Tagged

Flickr eyecandy

Posted on February 22, 2006 | Leave a comment

So you've been bitten by the Flickr bug. You update your photostream regularly. Wouldn't it be great if your screensaver could show you your pictures, your favourites, those of your contacts, or others based on tags or groups? I've found two good Flickr screensavers:

I'd love one for Linux…

Technorati tags:

Leave a comment

Tagged , ,

The end of SWT? Mustang kicks back

Posted on February 22, 2006 | Leave a comment

One of the big annoyances I always had with Java was how bad rich client / desktop applications looked. They can be ugly, and even with Swing, the look and feel often never quite matched the native desktop… this was particularly true on Linux, and I was also disappointed with the lack of antialiased (smoothed) fonts for Swing GUIs on Windows until recently.

Ensode.net has some screenshots of the new GTK look and feel that is due to come along in Mustang (aka Java 1.6), and it does seem that it is likely to be a much better match for my Linux GNOME desktop.

Of course, this isn't enough to sway me away from SWT, which always looks completely native, and as a programming framework it gets richer by the day. developerWorks has an article comparing AWT, Swing and SWT, and a tutorial on how to migrate your applications from Swing to SWT.

Leave a comment

Tagged , ,