Orsburn (Static Content)

Noticed first a couple of days ago, the browser based version of Google Drive can now view Open Document Format (ODF) files.  Initial tests have confirmed that both word processing (ODT) and spreadsheet (ODS) files will open in Drive. Drive is Google 's offering in the cloud storage market.  The service includes web based applications for editing office productivity files.  Until just recently, ODF files could only be downloaded in order to be read. At this point, web application productivity suites are light on features compared to their desktop brethren, so this addition is a welcome convenience, to be sure.

News broke today on tech outlets like The Verge and TechCrunch about a new calendar service called Sunrise .  Login options for the web application version include Google and Facebook .  A quick look around after logging in via each of these methods yielded an appealing interface, but nothing really enough to sway users away from whatever they're currently using. What is impressive though is how quickly the spam machine was fired up.  The following message was received only hours after the brief tour from earlier in the day.  Here is the message veiled under the "From" address of "support@sunrise.am." Dear user, Today is an exciting day for Sunrise. We're launching on both Desktop and Android. [image] You can start using Sunrise everywhere for free. On desktop, Sunrise will help you stay organized by combining all the information you need in one place. The desktop app is fast, beautiful and brings everything you love about Sunrise to your desk...

The three main functions of programming, coding, testing, and documenting can be a "mouthful" when spoken together.  This can be clumsy when done so on a regular basis.  In en effort to simplify matters and to "follow suit" with so many other aspects of the development world, the abbreviation CTD may be appropriate. Like so many other abbreviations (also known as acronyms), this term could be used as a verb as well.  "Thanks Bill, I'll get back to CTDing now."  Of course, the assumed redundancy is noted when used in this manner.  Meaning that, if the use of CTD in its expanded form stands for code-ing, test-ing, and document-ing, then CTD-ing is assumed to be compounding the "-ing" ending in each of the individual words as well.  For simplicity's sake, just let it stand as "CTDing."

The ability to respond to calendar event invitations in most applications is broken.  This is true for both web and desktop applications. There are a whole host of calendaring applications on the market with the likes such as Exchange , Google , Yahoo , iCloud , you name it.  In more closed environments like those in many offices that use Outlook as the client for email and calendaring, the problem is less noticeable.  The integration is much tighter.  Take Google Calendar and iCloud for example, the integration is less tight because invitees will get their notifications using Apple Mail , Yahoo Mail , iOS , Android , and who knows what else.  This is because the invitees will be using their email and calendaring application of choice rather than whatever is issued in the office. Attempts have been made by most software vendors to gracefully handle invitations from email, and the calendar vendors try their best to make the invitations simple to respond from...

Eclipse has the ability to prevent certain files from being incorporated into projects or from being scanned during file searches.  The limits are applied by way of patterns in the file names. It may well be the case that several IDEs are used in the development of projects which will litter the projects' folders with IDE support files.  These can get in the way of Eclipse, but can be ignored with this resource limiting provision. To get there: Right click on a project Choose Properties Expand Resource Choose Resource Filters Some common "exclude" filters might be: .buildpath (file-level should be fine) .git (folder-level, and should exclude children as well) *.komodoproject (file-level should be fine) .project (folder-level, and should exclude children as well) .settings (folder-level, and should exclude children as well) *.sublime-* (file-level should be fine) Adding these filters to an Eclipse project should allow the placement of project file...

Google provides a feature with its YouTube service that allows a user to jump to any place in a video.  The trick?  Simply put a minute and second marker in the URL using the MMmSSs format, where "MM" is the minute value with a leading zero, and "SS" is the seconds value, also with a leading zero. This minute and second values combination then just needs to be combined with some URL notation to tell YouTube to jump to this spot in the video.  This looks like:  #t=MMmSSs.  Just tack this bit to the end of your URL and away you go.  Compare the differences in an actual YouTube URL: Plays the video from the beginning http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu927_ul_X0 Plays the video from second 23 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu927_ul_X0#t=00m23s

It's not immediately obvious, but there is a concise way to cast all elements of an array to a single type.  It's all possible with the array_walk() function. array_walk($test, function(&$value, $key){$value = (integer) $value;}); Used in an example it would look like this. $sampleArray = array("one"=>"1", "two"=>"2", "three"=>3, "four"=>"4d"); var_dump($sampleArray); array_walk($sampleArray, function(&$value, $key){$value = (integer) $value;}); //--------------------------------^ Required! ^ //--------------------------------------------------------+ Type to cast to. var_dump($sampleArray); NOTE:  It's important to note that the ampersand is necessary.  See the note about references on the second argument of the array_walk() function documentation.