Tuesday Jan 06, 2009
We all know that MySQL
is the world's most popular open source database. So it should come as no surprise that MySQL is huge in academia, both for back-end databases such as Ladok, a national system used for the documentation of academic information in Sweden, and as a platform for instruction in the classroom.
Here are a couple of MySQL resources that will be of interest to professors, university DBAs and students:
MySQL University is an ongoing series of free educational online webinars offered each Thursday. An individual Wiki page is created for each session containing links to the presentation
slides, the presentation recording (slides and audio), and the chat
transcript.
MySQL Conference & Expo 2009, is scheduled for April 20-23, 2009 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. There are special discounts available for professors (50%) and full-time students (65%).
Change (Y) Our World.
Monday Jan 05, 2009
It's amazing what gets done when people (and institutions) work together. A good example is the innovation that comes out the collaborative efforts that Sun formalizes with academic institutions through the Center of Excellence Program (COE). Here are some good examples:
- Saint Paul College COE for next-generation immersive learning systems based on Project Wonderland. Check out Kevin's blog for info on the upcoming COE launch event;
- The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi Centre of Excellence
in E-governance which is conducting research to advance the eGovernance field to contribute to better social infrastructure, provide enhanced security and a better quality of life for the citizens of India; and
- The growing community of COEs adopting OpenSPARC to execute chip design research
and course work based on Sun's chip multi-threading (CMT) design.
Of course, there are many more outstanding collaborative efforts underway in a variety of fields.
Sunday Jan 04, 2009
I'm sure many student developers have made New Year resolutions and I'm willing to bet that at least some of them have resolved to become better coders. Check out this great article from the Sun Developer Network (SDN) in which some of the best Java developers offer their advice for students. Here's a summary of their advice:
- Write lots of code. Have fun with it!
- Learn to use your tools.
- Don't put your entire application in one method
- Trust the garbage collector to do its job
- Start simple. Learn the basics of the language
- Don't panic (when you first see the API with thousands of classes)
Read the full article.
Friday Nov 21, 2008
Sun Campus Ambassadors are students that work for Sun as interns to educate students about the benefits of open source technologies from Sun. Last year, Zhiqi Tao served as our Campus Ambassador at the University of Melbourne. After graduation, Tao came to work for Sun as a Support Engineer focusing on Sun's SW stack for high performance computing (HPC).
Tao developed a great tutorial on how students can turn their laptop into a HPC development platform using Sun's HPC Linux Stack on VirtualBox. Check out his blog to learn about Sun xVM VirtualBox, Sun HPC Software Linux Edition, and the Sun Lustre Filesystem.
I learned of Tao's tutorial when he emailed the current generation of Campus Ambassadors to let them know about this great new student resource. One of the best aspects of the Campus Ambassador Program is the sense of community and mutual support amongst the more than 500 students participating in the program. So it was very gratifying to see the Campus Ambassador alumni continue to participate and support our community.
Thursday Nov 20, 2008
One of the great things about open source technologies and communities is the transparency associated with development and release cycles. So the release of NetBeans 6.5 does not come as a surprise. Yet, it's still fun to proclaim that NetBeans 6.5 has been officially released and is available for download.
NetBeans IDE 6.5 offers simplified and rapid development of web, enterprise, desktop, and mobile applications with PHP, JavaScript, Java, C/C++, Ruby, and Groovy. Here's a summary of the new features in NB 6.5:
- Robust support for PHP and JavaScript
- Debugging for Firefox and IE
- Support for Groovy and Grails
- New enhancements for Java™, Ruby and Rails, and C/C++ development
- Built-in support for Hibernate, Eclipse project import, and compile on save
If you're new to NetBeans, you'll also appreciate the IDE editing capabilities and the famous Swing GUI Builder (Matisse).
Here are some good resources for you to learn about NetBeans IDE 6.5:
Students will love all the time-saving features that will make coding your class projects so much easier. Have fun with NetBeans 6.5.
Download NetBeans IDE 6.5
Tuesday Nov 18, 2008
I want to share with you that Sun recently announced EduConnection.org, a social networking site for IT professionals in education. If you're interested in a short audio explaining more about it, you can check out this audio segment on Sun News Radio.
Designed as a neutral forum to connect and empower the global education community, EduConnection.org serves Sun’s education sector partners and customers. Focusing on Sun’s education customer community, including the more than 38,000 subscribers to Sun's Educonnection newsletter, Educonnection.org offers a platform for schools to exchange information and best practices that will help them to mitigate the challenges of purchasing and implementing new technology in an era of increasing budgetary pressure. It also provides another opportunity for Sun to directly energize, engage and support the education community.
We're shifting the conversation so community members can select the content they want, define useful content via connections with other members, contribute articles, linked blogs, videos, podcasts and more.
Share this as well with your instructors, your on-campus IT staff, and your administrators that joining will give them access to valuable Education industry content and conversations, whether they contribute or read.
Take a look around, sign up and participate. Join the Conversation.
Monday Nov 17, 2008
The latest Sun Studio Express release with updated features and enhancements is now available for download. Sun Studio Software delivers a high-performance, optimizing C/C++/Fortran developer toolchain for Solaris, OpenSolaris, and Linux OSs, including support for multicore x86- and SPARC-based systems. The toolchain includes parallelizing compilers, code-level and memory debuggers, and performance and thread analysis tools. With a NetBeans-based IDE developing parallel applications for the mutlicore era has never been easier!
Sun Studio is supported on OpenSolaris 2008.05, Solaris 10 and Linux (RHEL 5/SuSe 10/Ubuntu 8.04/CentOS 5.1)
Download a free unrestricted copy today!
If you register your Sun Studio installation, you will also receive access to the following content:
- Sample chapter from the book Solaris Application Programming by Darryl Gove titled, "Correctness and Debug"
- Guide to selecting the best compiler options
- Booklet on using Sun Studio to develop parallel applications
For more information on this latest release of Sun Studio Express join Ikroop Dhillon, Product Marketing Manager for Sun Studio and Vijay Tatkar,Senior Engineering Manager in the Developer Tools Organization, both with Sun Microsystems, as they discuss the feature highlights of Sun Studio Express 11/08.
Listen to the podcast.
Saturday Nov 15, 2008
Here's your chance to act on your support for NetBeans. The polls are open in the 2009 Developer.com Product of the Year Awards and NetBeans has been nominated in 5 categories including:
- Development Tool of the Year: NetBeans Platform
- Development Utility of the Year: NetBeans Profiler
- Wireless/Mobile Development Tool or Add-in of the Year: NetBeans
Mobility Pack for Connected Device Configuration (CDC) 5.5
- Java Tool or Add-in of the Year:NetBeans IDE
- Open Source Tool of the Year: NetBeans
Cast your vote today for NetBeans and help the world recognize NetBeans as the only IDE you need! Voting ends Monday, December 15, 2008.
As good as it is, NetBeans is getting even better with the upcoming release of NB 6.5 which will provide several new features and
enhancements, such as a new IDE-wide QuickSearch shortcut, a more
user-friendly interface, enhanced support for web frameworks and automatic Compile on Save. That's "Change" we can believe in - and vote for.
Friday Nov 14, 2008
If you are a student, professor or researcher and haven't heard of Sun SPOTs, you've been missing out.
Sun SPOTs are small, wireless, battery powered devices (a platform really) that include built-in sensors that can easily interface to
external devices. Here's what makes Sun SPOTs extra cool. They are programmed in Java. This means that programming for embedded systems is no longer limited to low level programming languages. But it just gets better. The entire SunSPOT technology stack (SW & HW) is completely open source. This opens up tremendous new possibilities to enhance curriculum, instruction and research.
Project Sun SPOT was developed by the smart researchers at Sun Labs as one of the foundation technologies that will enable the "Internet Of Things" in which everything with an electronic pulse (cars, appliances, etc.) can be connected over the Internet. Think of this as the ultimate realization of Sun's vision that the network is the computer.
In fact, Time Magazine just recognized The Internet Of Things as one of their Best Inventions of 2008. For ultimate Geek appeal, however, it's hard to beat the recognition bestowed upon Sun SPOT as the InfoWorld #1 Must Have Gadget for the Discerning Geek.
Sun SPOT World has all the info you need including a good resource for getting started and info on special discounted pricing for education.
Monday Nov 10, 2008
Most everyone has heard of Sun's support for Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) by now. But can you open source hardware? Well, that's exactly what Sun has done with OpenSPARC. Perhaps a bit more background is in order.
Through the OpenSPARC Community, Sun has made the hardware source code of the UltraSPARC T1 & T2 processors available under an Open Source license. The code along with the development tools which are available through the OpenSPARC community, provide the essential components to develop a new chip. Of course, what makes this all really interesting is that OpenSPARC represents the bleeding edge of multi-core, multi-threaded chip architecture or CMT as we say at Sun.
So what does all this have to do with college professors? Well...alot. To understand why, it's appropriate to reflect on the quote by that famous professor of computer architecture who said "I skate to where the puck is going to be,..."
We all know that this quote is really by Wayne Gretzky, but here is why the quote applies to chip architecture. If you are a professor, you want your courses to be relevant today, while you are teaching them and still be relevant for your students once they graduate. Multi-core, mult-threaded architectures are not only the current state-of-the-art, but the future as well.
Professors have their choice of chip platforms to include in their curricula. But, why not select the platform packing the most cores and threads and one that integrates all the key functions of a server on a
single chip? If you combine the benefits of an open source platform with the technical benefits, OpenSPARC is a compelling choice. So to once again paraphrase the Great One, professors selecting OpenSPARC as an instructional platform are "skating to where the puck is going to be"
In Europe, universities and professors can now benefit from a new collaborative relationship between Sun and Europractice, a European Union-backed non-profit microelectronics design stimulation project. This new collaboration is designed to cultivate Europe's future engineering talent and provide researchers, professors and students with an end-to-end solution to help create next-generation multithreaded microprocessors. Sun and Europractice will work together to promote curriculum adoption beginning with a series of OpenSPARC technology workshops this autumn. Professors attending the workshops will then be able to incorporate OpenSPARC in their courses.
Another helpful resource are the OpenSPARC Slidecasts consisting of 12 modules which participants through the process of developing their own OpenSPARC designs. The twelve chapters cover the different aspects of OpenSPARC and together are equivalent to a 2 day technical OpenSPARC workshop.
Also take advantage of the free download of the newly published OpenSPARC Internals, edited by David Weaver. Register and download a free PDF copy.
And, here's something for all you SW developers. We need software optimized to leverage the benefits of multi-core, multi-threaded architectures. A great resource is the White Paper: Multithreaded Application Acceleration with Chip Multithreading (CMT).
Wednesday Oct 29, 2008
Sun announced the Open Source University Meetup (OSUM - pronounced "awesome") today at EduCause so I thought I'd share a few thoughts with you. If you're interested in an audio version, you can check the OSUM segment on Sun News Radio.
OSUM is a global community of students that are passionate about Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and how it is Changing (Y) Our World. Before you ask, this is not a typo. We say that FOSS can Change Your World because it opens up great new opportunities for student learning, collaboration and career advancement. We say it can Change Our World because FOSS promotes digital freedoms, opportunities and innovation that benefits our global community. Hence, Change (Y) Our World. We call it a ‘Meet-up to encourage collaboration between student groups to create an even stronger open source community. I'll be blogging later on the Change (Y) Our World theme.
The OSUM Community lives online and on hundreds of university campuses around the world. These OSUM Clubs work to educate students about the benefits of FOSS. OSUM Clubs typically conduct monthly meetings through which they provide technical demonstrations of open source software and conduct hands-on labs and student projects. They also inform students about about free students resources such as the Sun Academic Initiative (SAI) which offers online web courses so that students can get trained and certified to prepare them for new careers in the IT industry.
The OSUM Community is also a social networking site that enables all of the OSUM Clubs to connect with tens of thousand student developers to learn, share and collaborate as a community. OSUM members also have fun making friends with other coders with the same passion for FOSS.
All students coders are invited to join this global social networking community and connect to thousands of students from around the world. Just go to osum.sun.com, register and get started with Changing (Y) Our World.
Tuesday Oct 28, 2008
Nuestra Comunidad OSUM sigue creciendo en todo el mundo! Hoy, me complace reconocer OSUM dos nuevos Clubes en Chile que se han sumado al Club Siglos- OSUM clubes con 100 o más miembros. El OSUM Clubes en la Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María y la Universidad de Concepción superó cada uno de los 100 miembros marca el día de hoy.
Como ustedes saben, es nuestra tradición en la Comunidad OSUM de adjudicación de la primera OSUM Club en cada país que se une al Club Siglo con una Pizza Meetup (Fiesta) para celebrar este importante ocasión. En este caso, hemos tenido dos OSUM Clubes de Chile llegar a los 100 miembros de marca dentro de una hora el uno del otro. Por lo tanto, Sun se complace de conceder OSUM cada Club con una Fiesta de Pizza.
Gran trabajo Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa y la Universidad de Concepción OSUM. Que se diviertan en su Pizza Party!
Saludos,
Gary
=========
Our OSUM Community continues to grow around the world! Today, I am pleased to recognize two new OSUM Clubs in Chile that have joined the Century Club - OSUM Clubs with 100 or more members. The OSUM Clubs at the Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria and the Universidad de Concepción each surpassed the 100 member mark today.
As you know, it is our tradition in the OSUM Community to award the first OSUM Club in each country that joins the Century Club with a Pizza Meetup (Party) to celebrate this important milestone. In this case, we had two OSUM Clubs from Chile reach the 100 member mark within an hour of each other. Therefore, Sun is pleased to award each OSUM Club with a Pizza Party.
Great job Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa and Universidad de Concepción OSUM. Have fun at your Pizza Party!
Saludos,
Gary
Monday Oct 27, 2008
The Sun Developer Network has just posted a webinar on "Building C/C++/Fortran applications on OpenSolaris and
Linux using Sun Studio". This is a great resource to learn about multi-core development, heterogeneous OpenSolaris and Linux development and Linux compatibility issues.
Join the webinar to learn how:
- Sun Studio Software addresses the 4 pillars of application development: performance, parallelism, productivity and platforms
- Sun Studio Software helps you optimize code and increase application performance
- To easily build parallel applications with Sun Studio
- To increase productivity with a next-gen NetBeans based IDE
- Sun Studio Software is the single source for heterogeneous OpenSolaris and Linux platforms
- Building C/C++/Fortran applications on OpenSolaris and Linux using Sun Studio
The speaker is Ikroop Dhillon, Product Marketing Manager for Sun Microsystems. The webinar is available on-demand October 27-31, 2008.
Join Now
Friday Oct 24, 2008
The OpenSolaris Ignite is the new monthly newsletter by, for, and about the OpenSolaris community. OpenSolaris Ignite features news, how-to articles, tech tips and reviews. This is a great resource for students using or developing on OpenSolaris. Check it out.
Thursday Oct 23, 2008
Let's face it. The job market for new college grads is getting tougher by the day. My advice - graduate with a degree from your university and a certification from Sun.
Through the Sun Academic Initiative (SAI), Sun provides students with valuable resources to pursue this career enhancing strategy and get a competitive edge as you enter the workforce. Sun certification is recognized industry-wide and demonstrates competency in high-demand technologies, such as the Java programming language and the Solaris Operating System. In other words, certification is tangible proof to employers of skills and knowledge needed for certain jobs.
Of course, there is this other important benefit - higher pay. According to a Certification Magazine Salary Survey, Sun Certification increases earning power:
-
Sun Certified Programmers earn on average 8.3% more than the average programmer
-
Sun Certified Developers earn on average 14.3% more than the average developer
-
Sun Certified System Administrators earn on average 31% more than system administrators certified on other operating systems
Professional certifications are available to SAI participants in these key areas:
Sun certification exams are heavily discounted for students participating in the SAI program. For example, exams that normally cost $160 for professionals are
$60 in the U.S. and $40 in Latin America and Asia.
The SAI provides access to free web-based courses to learn Sun technologies at your own pace at times that are convenient for you. SAI students also have access to ePractice
Certification Exams. These no-cost web based practice exams include sample test questions, the correct answers with
explanations, and provides the test taker with suggestions for future study.
Click here to register for the SAI. We will email you the information you need to create your personal user account on the SAI Learning Connection, Sun's learning portal for students.
For more information or to join the SAI - visit the SAI Website.
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