RSSenal is an Android application that uses the PubSubHubbub protocol to deliver real-time push notifications of feed activity. It can be used for a myriad of things: staying on top of trending news items, getting an up-to-the-minute update from a collaboration tool's feed, keep track of incoming comments and feedback; and that's just getting started.



It is currently in beta, and unavailable on the Android Market; however, you can download RSSenal 0.3.2 from the official website.

We've been pretty quiet the past few months as we've been toiling away on some new projects, and we're proud to bring you a few updates and things to play with! We've been doing a lot, so we won't unload too much on you at once, here's a glimpse at what we've been working on ...

Cloud services are becoming more and more common now, and I'm not talking about grandma's online backup. Websites and applications are starting to fundamentally rely on services that exist ... out/up there somewhere ... and if you weren't an early adopter, well you had better get into the game, and quick. Here are some resources that will help you get your feet wet:

Amazon EC2 Micro Instance

New customers are entitled one year's subscription to the AWS Free Usage Tier, which includes an EC2 Micro Instance and access to leverage free usage tiers on the Amazon S3, Amazon Elastic Block Store, Amazon Elastic Load Balancing, and AWS data transfer services.

Windows Azure for MSDN Subscribers

Subscribers to the Microsoft Developer Network can activate free, limited access to Windows Azure (Microft's Cloud Computing Platform) which seem to available at three levels of access: Professional, Premium, and Ultimate BizSpark. When you've chosen the plan that's right for you, and you're up and running, make sure to check out the Windows Azure Developer Portal for great resources to get started! If you're not a subscriber to MSDN, you can sign up for a free trial of Windows Azure which allots 750 hours on an Extra Small Compute Instance, 25 hours on a Small Compute Instance, 20GB storage, 20GB transfer in/out, and 100k AppFabric Access Control transactions per month.

Force.com PaaS (Platform as a Service)

Force.com is a cloud platform that combines the four main products of Salesforce.com (Appforce, Siteforce, VMforce, and ISVforce) to create a truly beefy toolkit and a no-holds-barred environment for businesses to create hardware agnostic cloud applications while reducing production and maintenance costs. Join the ranks of Qualcomm, Starbucks, Dell, Kaiser Permanente, Snapple, and the likes and get your Force on (with Freeforce), today!

While there are many free options available to software developers in respect to cloud computing services, they seem to come and go with the tide, so the ones listed here are packages offered by truly adopted platforms that won't be going anywhere, any time soon.

StumbledUpon this thread on StackOverflow and thought I might share some of the more priceless gems.

Users were asked to respond to: What programming terms have you coined that have taken off in your own circles (i.e. have heard others repeat it)? It might be within your own team, workplace or garnered greater popularity on the Internet. [...] This question serves in the spirit of communication among programmers through sharing of terminology with each other, to benefit us by its propagation within our own teams and environments.

Yoda Conditions

Using if(constant == variable) instead of if(variable == constant), like if(4 == foo). Because it's like saying "if blue is the sky" or "if tall is the man".

What really got me hyucking here was a comment by one Michael Myers: Isn't "Yoda Programming" where you never handle exceptions? Because, you know, there is no "try".







A Duck

A feature added for no other reason than to draw management attention and be removed, thus avoiding unnecessary changes in other aspects of the product.

This started as a piece of Interplay corporate lore. It was well known that producers (a game industry position, roughly equivalent to PMs) had to make a change to everything that was done. The assumption was that subconsciously they felt that if they didn't, they weren't adding value.

The artist working on the queen animations for Battle Chess was aware of this tendency, and came up with an innovative solution. He did the animations for the queen the way that he felt would be best, with one addition: he gave the queen a pet duck. He animated this duck through all of the queen's animations, had it flapping around the corners. He also took great care to make sure that it never overlapped the "actual" animation.

Eventually, it came time for the producer to review the animation set for the queen. The producer sat down and watched all of the animations. When they were done, he turned to the artist and said, "that looks great. Just one thing - get rid of the duck."

Doctype Decoration

When web designers add a doctype declaration but don't bother to write valid markup.

Hot potato / Hot potatoes

By far my favorite. Http and Https repsectively. Same number of syllables, but more fun to say.



Be sure to check out the SO thread for more comedy gold, mostly for developers and sysadmins, but hey!

At Geekworks, we LOVE ThePlanet. No, I'm not talking about the planet as in planet Earth (though we do love that too); I'm talking about The Planet hosting company. Bigger isn't always better (as seen above), but it sure does help sometimes. Back in November 2010, ThePlanet merged with SoftLayer, another hosting giant, making them an even bigger player in the industry. The merge was painless and only increased the services offered. Now I should say we LOVE SoftLayer. Not only do they offer amazing services at pretty decent prices, their otherworldly speed and the fact that they can do almost anything you are willing to pay for, really makes SoftLayer, a superb choice for both the do-it-yourself type or just-get-it-done-for-me-before-my-meeting type.

Though we're not married to SoftLayer, when you have a large, mission critical application written by Geekworks, it'll likely be hosted with SoftLayer.