The United States House of Representatives rejected the $700 billion bail out plan, leading to a 777.68 point drop on the Dow Jones index. I never saw the Bloomberg/CNBC reporters so excited!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Monday_(September_2008)

Interested in publishing your ESRI Shapefiles to Google Earth? Or converting KML files to SHP files? I found this nice freeware tool called KML2SHP which solves your problem. Free download here:

http://www.zonums.com/kml2shp.html

Music, music… one of my expressions of art.

This guy, Charlie Parker, invited me to the fabulous world of Jazz. His music is contagious and it’s hard to be indifferent: either you love it or you hate it! And it’s so thrilling to learn about the players’ life and relate it to the songs…

However, it’s so annoying to listen to his records after practicing… :P

Have you read the Ten principles that contribute to a Googley user experience?

1. Focus on people – their lives, their work, their dreams.
2. Every millisecond counts.
3. Simplicity is powerful.
4. Engage beginners and attract experts.
5. Dare to innovate.
6. Design for the world.
7. Plan for today’s and tomorrow’s business.
8. Delight the eye without distracting the mind.
9. Be worthy of people’s trust.
10. Add a human touch.

The main article explores every topic. It’s a must-read for any engineer!

Opera has just lauched Dragonfly! Today!!

I’ve been waiting for a decent javascript/css debugger…

http://www.opera.com/products/dragonfly/

I’ve playing around with the Google Maps API and I like it. Well documented, with nice examples. The question is: what’s the next step? How can I create value from it? :)

I’ve noticed a little tiny annoying bug: if you want to have more than one map with directions, you have to put them in the same table! If you close the table tag, only one of  the maps will be enable! The other one will be an empty, grey google map. (Some technical details: 1 – I don’t like to be forced to use table; 2 – I don’t understand… the map is identified in the DOM structure: why do I need to create a parent called table?; 3 – only one table tag? how can I put text or other elements, with putting them in table rows?!; 4 – how can I control the ajax request? try to write china and wait a couple of minutes for the result…)

I’ve been digging for a long time in this framework: CakePHP. Nothing new here, I just wanted to shout that I love working at the bakery!

After many projects in web apps, mainly using PHP, I’ve noticed the huge amount of time that any developer spends creating support structures – such as: database connection, reading/writing data, form validation, basic string functions, etc. A framework can reduce this waste of time, letting you focus on what really matters: user interaction, services and data.

The most famous framework, nowadays, is Ruby on Rails, which combines multiple programming paradigms and fits like a glove in agile software development models. Includes nice features as scaffolding (so damn cool!), Active Record, MVC structure (so KISS!!), etc. Cool, huh? Maybe at first sight… I’ve spent much time trying to read the RoR Bible, but I get quite lost in Ruby’s details. Good framework, complex language.

The founders of CakePHP took the RoR concepts and created a whole new framework, combining the best features from both worlds. Since I prefer to read (and write) in PHP, they’ve created something highly useful for me. Combined with the traditional web dev artillery, there is a plugin for syntax highlighting and the other old buddy for content upload. For the skeptics, here is the traditional demo: how to setup a blog in less than 15 minutes.

EDIT: However… I hate when they change the API. That’s why they call it “beta”… :)

Today I watched one of my favourite TED presentations. It mixes some of my favourite topics, nowadays: data visualization and social networks. It’s almost a crazy dream to think that someday, everything you upload to the internet will be connected to the semantic web. You will be able to upload your holiday pictures and they will be tagged automatically. And if you forgot to shoot a little detail on the landscape, don’t worry, someone else did that task for you. On one hand, it seems a dream (everything connected, you, your data, your friends, your city, your favourite restaurant, etc, etc) but on the other hand there are many leaking issues such as privacy…

EDIT: check it here: http://photosynth.net/

Some days ago, I found this little video about Fractals on my iPod Nano. I truly recommend you to take a look at the video.

It’s a presentation by the mathematician Ron Eglash who exposes in 16 minutes his whole investigation about African fractals, in buildings and braids. The whole subject is fascinating even if you don’t like maths.

The main reason why I’m publishing this here, doesn’t have to do with fractals.
It has to do with modern lifestyle. I was watching the video then I stopped and thought: “Here I am, on my daily way to work, watching in a small (and beautiful) device the resume of an interesting life of investigation.” High quality devices, high quality contents… all on the palm of my hand.

More about this subject: a list of fractals in Wikipedia, including my favourite one: Pythagoras Triangle. This is very handful in boring meetings :) All you need is a pen and a piece of paper. The limit is your patience!

I personally admire some of the adverts from this selection: funny, smart and well-done!

You can find the complete list here:

http://funtasticus.com/20080110/a-selection-of-perfect-ads/