September 2008 means: Back to school and… OpenOffice 3.0

OpenOffice.org 3.0 is due in September, and it promises to be worth the wait. Even though OpenOffice.org 2.4 is not yet out the door, plans on OpenOffice.org 3. are getting very concrete, and the firts (beta) results are looking promising.

Adobe has started development of a Flash player for iPhone !?

Adobe’s  company chief executive Shantanu Narayen said that his company started the development of a Flash player suitable for use on Apple’s iPhone.

AIR app in the spotlight

Nicolas Lierman from Boulevart, wrote a fancy AIR application which brings the power of Google Analytics to the desktop.

Google Analytics is a web service to help businesses figure out where their visitors come from and how they interact with their sites. Analytics Reporting Suite is an Adobe AIR application that brings Google Analytics to the desktop.

In this article, he talks about his experiences on porting the Google Analytics web version to an Adobe AIR application and also about their plans for the suite’s future.

Checki t out: http://www.aboutnico.be/index.php/google-analytics-air-beta-sign-up

The Adobe’s on AIR train is coming to Brussels

You probably read about the AIRbus tour in the U.S. Well, it is finally coming to Europe… Oh, it’s not a bus.

The on AIR European tour tour is a free two-week long train tour through 12 cities in Europe, where developers can learn how to bring their web applications to the desktop with Adobe AIR. 

Each city will host a free one day conference on AIR and will be packed with technical sessions, showcases and discussions. Registration is required so don’t forget to register here.I’ll be joining the tour in Brussels: 7 April – The Claridge- Brussels. See you there !

Het Diabolo Project

Update: Foto’s, foto’s en nog eens foto’s…

Indien je – net zoals ondergetekende – in de buurt van de luchthaven “Brusssels Airport” woont, zal je er alvast iets van gemerkt hebben: Er staat ons ‘t een en ‘t ander te wachten op en rond de Haachtsesteenweg, de E19 en Brucargo.

UPDATE: Ik heb een GoogleEarth KMZ bestand gemaakt met alle details, en een tweede met bovenstaand inplantingsplan als overlay.

UPDATE 04/2008: Bekijk zeker deze website eens: FerroSteph.net, een website met veel informatie en foto’s over het Diabolo project.

Eind oktober 2007 startten de werken van het Diabolo project, de “Noordelijke onstluiting van de luchthaven”. Bedoeling is om tegen Februari 2012 alles afgewerkt te hebben.

Finally: An official Google Calendar Outlook Sync tool

First of all: I hate Outlook.

But… Previous(successful) attempts to sync both my employer’s Netscape Calendar, my Google Calendar and my HTC PDA are as follows (no, don’t laugh):

1. I sync my employer’s calendar server with an old Qtek 2020 PDA
   (The Netscape Calendar server at work can only sync to old Pocket PC 2003 devices… )
2. I then run a tool on the good old Qtek called GooSync to sync my employer’s calendar with Google
   (GooSync is nifty tool, but the freeware version is limited to about 3 weeksof sync window…)
3. I then run the same GooSync tool  on my new HTC phone and I end up with 3 nicely synched calendars: Netscape at work, my 2 PDA’s and Google Calendar
   (FYI: In GooSync I’m using another userid/password but pointing to the same Google Calendar)

As you can see, not really flexible… Which makes me start to *tolerate*Outlook )…

This morning, I stumbled across Google Calendar Sync, which allows you to sync events between Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook Calendar. Hmmm… Interesting.

So, I decided to give it a try and yes… 5 minutes later my Google and Outlook (yuk) calendar are up-to-date.

But… where does it leave me with my calendar sync on my HTC ?

It’s only a partial success: I got rid of the GooSync tool on my HTC device and can now sync nicely using ActiveSync without the limitation of Goosync. But… I still need to manually (Goo)Sync my Qtek 2020 with Google in order to get my employer’s meeting bookings.

If anyone out there has a solution, let me know )

Firefox 3 promises to be a speed-monster

The latest nightly builds of Mozilla Firefox 3 are now being built with Profile Guided Optimization (PGO), and tests confirmed that Firefox 3.0 is now the fastest browser on the earth and more than 30% faster in JavaScript tests than the latest Opera Beta (9.5.9807)…

The figures

Cybernetnews.com reports the results of the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark test, used for each of the different browsers. All of the tests below were performed on the same Windows machine, and the Firefox 3 nightly builds definitely came out on top. Here are the results sorted from best to worst (each one is hyperlinked to the full stats):

1. Firefox 3 Nightly (PGO Optimized): 7.263ms
2. Firefox 3 Nightly (02/25/2008 build): 8.219ms
3. Opera 9.5.9807 Beta: 10.824ms
4. Firefox 3 Beta 3: 16.080ms
5. Safari 3.0.4 Beta: 18.012ms
6. Firefox 2.0.0.12: 29.376ms
7. Internet Explorer 7: 72.375ms

So what is Profile Guided Optimization?

When building (compiling) Firefox, a set of tests are run and the data from these tests are used to optimize the compiled code. The data from the tests enables the compiler to aggressively optimize code in Firefox. The data represents how the program is likely to perform in a production environment. Basically, it runs the Firefox code to see what functions get used the most and optimizes the final code around that data.

Profile-guided optimization is a relatively new feature in both GCC and Visual C++ that improves the quality of generated code.

IE already doing this

IE7 was build with Profile-Guided Optimizations and gained a 8% performance improvement with no additional code change.

For more information about Profile-Guided Optimizations:
- Profile-Guided Optimizations in Microsoft Visual C++
- Building with Profile-Guided Optimization

 

Sources: gemal.dk and cybernetnews.com