There’s a new language on the block, and it’s recently had version 1.0 tagged. Go is a compiled language with some interesting features such as garbage collection, and concurrency that just works. More interesting perhaps though are the syntax choices for the language designed to make writing Go programs more compact and readable. They have a fantastic Tour of Go that covers the language and allows you to compile examples remotely, displaying the result in the browser.

I ran through the majority of the tour last night as well as grabbed a copy of the toolchain for my local box and have to admit it has me interested. They already have a nice set of packages for doing server work, including an http client and server implementation.

There a few interesting novelties as well, including the go get command that lets you install additional libraries straight from repository sources including places like github and bitbucket.

There’s also already a pretty good community for the language with go bindings for databases, gui toolkits, audio & video, opengl & sdl, and much more.

All in all, this is definitely something worth keeping an eye on, so go check it out and tell me what you think.

During the course of development, there may come a time on android where you need to serialize an object. By far, the simplest way to handle this for an object containing primitives and primitive object wrappers is to implement the Serializable interface. There are caveats to this approach though.

1. The resulting implementation can be significantly slower than a Parcelable
2. No support for arrays of objects implementing Serializable
3. Limited support for a Serializable with a Parcelable member

With the ease of implementing a Serializable, implementing a Parcelable might initially come off as a daunting task after inspecting the methods needed for implementing. The sparse android documentation covering the subject doesn’t help subside these fears either, but fear not! Let’s look at this piece by piece to expose it’s simplicity.

Here’s an example class that has two members, each a Bundle (which in themselves implement Parcelable). We implement Parcelable and add the needed methods to override.

public class Info implements Parcelable {
    public Bundle info1;
    public Bundle info2;

    @Override
    public int describeContents() {
        return 0;
    }

    @Override
    public void writeToParcel(Parcel dest, int flags) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
    }
}

The describeContents method can be left as is, the value returned is used for special case scenarios not being covered here. If we look at the writeToParcel method, the first argument is the Parcel dest. You can look at this object as a First In, First Out queue. The Parcel dest contains multiple methods for writing different values to it, and this same Parcel will then be received by our CREATOR member (that has not yet been added) when deserializing. Let’s go ahead and adjust this method to store the members info1 and info2.

    @Override
    public void writeToParcel(Parcel dest, int flags) {
        dest.writeBundle(info1);
        dest.writeBundle(info2);
    }

That’s it! Our object can now be serialized. To deserialize, we also need to implement Parcelable.Creator as the member CREATOR.

    public static final Parcelable.Creator<Info> CREATOR =
        new Parcelable.Creator<Info>() {
            @Override
            public Info createFromParcel(Parcel source) {
                Info info = new Info();
                info.info1 = source.readBundle();
                info.info2 = source.readBundle();
                return info;
            }

            @Override
            public Info[] newArray(int size) {
                return null;
            }
        };

The createFromParcel method receives the argument, Parcel source. This is effectively the same Parcel we wrote to in our writeToParcel method. Keeping in mind the First In, First Out methodology, we simply read out our data in the same order we wrote it and return the new object. Deseriliazation complete!

You can explore the Parcel methods for a full reference of objects that can be stored as-is. The complete example is below.

public class Info implements Parcelable {
    public Bundle info1;
    public Bundle info2;

    @Override
    public int describeContents() {
        return 0;
    }

    @Override
    public void writeToParcel(Parcel dest, int flags) {
        dest.writeBundle(info1);
        dest.writeBundle(info2);
    }

    public static final Parcelable.Creator<Info> CREATOR =
        new Parcelable.Creator<Info>() {
            @Override
            public Info createFromParcel(Parcel source) {
                Info info = new Info();
                info.info1 = source.readBundle();
                info.info2 = source.readBundle();
                return info;
            }

            @Override
            public Info[] newArray(int size) {
                return null;
            }
        };
}

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is really something that Google is working on. Awesome.

The problem, they want them to look like this.

This is possibly the coolest, most innovative thing I think I’ve ever seen. But come on. Those things just look stupid. Lets be honest as cool as this technology might actually be, it will never take off if they look like this.

Google please just make them look like regular glasses. Please.

Have you ever seen a work of art by Piet Mondrian?

Like this?

You probably have, and immediately followed your viewing with the statement “What’s so special about that? I can do that!”.

Well the website My Mondrian , will let you do just that. Its a really awesome pastime or creative outlet.

However, what you will quickly discover when playing with the elements on the website, is that Piet knew what he was doing, and you really start to appreciate his work much more. His work became simply about design, nothing more. He removed all recognizable imagery from his paintings and made them only about aesthetics.

I always find the work that artists do in their later years interesting. It almost always gets simpler, or fundamental. It seems backwards to go from complex to fundamental, but this falling or stripping away of the intricate is where the truth, beauty, and understanding truly lies.

Piet Mondrian appreciation follows…

Click here to view the embedded video.

I dont think there is much I can say about this video. Its beautiful.

I will say this, while I love my (tablet), there is just something about paper… and bound books for that matter. It can be replaced for some things, but I don’t think we will ever fully replace it.  When you read from a book you have a real connection to the material literally and physically. To hold a book in your hands is more magical than any tablet can and could ever be, at least in the sense of cognition. I bet you can remember the shape feel and size of every book you’ve ever read. IN that way you do not only remember the content of the book you read but you have an experience that helps you retain what you read. That has a lot to do with that tactile feedback. Watch the video. Remember the books you’ve held and read in the past. Go buy a book.

If you are looking for a simple and easy way to create a HTML and CSS comparison chart, then you should give Compare Ninja a try.

Compare Ninja is an online website that allows people to create beautiful HTML & CSS based comparison tables. All of this is accomplished in a matter of minutes and the result can be displayed on your website/blog or anywhere you want.

To start off, click on the “Create Now” button, after which you will be required to make an account on the website. Once done, log in and start to fil in the basic details, i.e. table title, items to compare, table width, etc. Choose the design. Once done, edit the fields accordingly and click the “Get Code” button to get the HTML & CSS code for the comparison table.

Features

• Free and easy to use.
• User-friendly themes make comparison tables look beautiful and appealing.
• Comparison tables can be edited at moments notice – HTML & CSS code available.

Link: www.compareninja.com

via makeusof.com

The other day I was presented with an invitation to a website (zurker.net). I signed up for the social network merely to see what it was. When I was “in”, I got frustrated, really fast. It suggested that I “connect with other users”, I couldn’t find out how to. A “real life” friend of mine had also got an invite so I was going to add him. There was literally no obvious way of doing this. Besides its user interface flaws, there seemed to be no use for the site. It was a social network that wants really bad to be Facebook, or at least Google+.

I got an email from them telling me to start adding people and claimed to be one of the fastest growing social networks on the Internet. I don’t see it. And i definitely don’t see it  dethroning Facebook.

Maybe I am wrong, but there just doesn’t seem to be a real point to trying to compete with Facebook. At close to a billion users how can you even begin to compete with it. After all Google+ is, at least in my opinion, better than Facebook. But I don’t use it. Even if a social network is better that doesn’t mean that it can take down Facebook. What’s important is this, Facebook is not a company, it is a form of communication(yes i know it is actually a company). Even with their constant restructuring of the way their site is set up, their users complain and then adapt. Why not just all switch to Google+ or Zurker? Because, while i might switch over I cant be sure that all my friends will, and what about all the stuff on facebook I have posted in the past? Sure there are services to switch all of that over but again I cant be sure that all my friends will switch over.

In a way the time I have spent on and with Facebook has become an investment. I upload photos and status updates and I end up with a digital scrapbook of what has been going on in my life (see timeline).

So please stop trying to compete with them. Yeah you might be able to do it better. But it doesn’t matter, in my opinion at least, any company trying to compete with them has already lost.

Use Facebook. Don’t compete with Facebook. Facebook is a form of communication, it is not Friendster, or MySpace. How we use it will likely change, as their website does, but it is here to stay.

Well let me just say that I hope not because I have an account, for which i have received much slack from my male facebook friends.

What is “Pinterest”?

Basically its a blog. Its what twitter is for text this is for links. Its a real quick blog. You find something you think is interesting and pin it o the site and add a brief comment, pick a stack of pins to add it to and your done. Follow other peoples pins. Pinterest has a great iOS application and their website is laid out beautifully.

But the one gripe that i have is its mostly women on, hence the slack from my facebook friends.

According to one analyst (here) 80 % of users are women.

Pinterest is the home economics of the internet right now, you know that class that guys took in school because its where all the girls were.

But for now not many men have caught on.

All in all it is a great service and a great way to organize what you are interested in.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you have been on the Internet in the past few days, you have either seen or heard about the video above. In it a guy flies using a android phone, a few wii remotes, and some giant wings. I (as well as everyone else that believed it) was excited, thrilled, and amazed at the work and accomplishment of this dutch team.

Well it turns out it was just a hoax. Jarno Smeets is a CGI artist who is in the middle of making a documentary about how easy it is to fool people on the Internet.

But here is the deal, why cant we do this? Why haven’t we? It must be possible. Make a light enough, big enough wing, with the right movement, and it has got to work.

Calling all inventors, life hackers, tinkerers and garage renaissance men, lets do this… for real.

Here’s a few drawing to give you (us) some inspiration.

I’m serious.

I downloaded the developer preview of Mountain Lion, apple’s forth coming OSX update, and it is really nice.

Some of the major features include;

1)Messages(available right now for anyone with Lion as a beta): is a great app that syncs your iMessages across all your devices iPhone iPad and mac. and “it just works” as the late steve jobs would say. When you send or receive a message you can read and reply to that message from any device and you can read your entire conversation from any of those devices, not just the ones that were sent from that device. Its nice.

2)more iCloud integration: OSX now has a reminders app and notes app that are very familiar to the ones you find on your iPad, and they sync across all your devices via iCloud. The Calendar app (previously iCal) works just like it did in lion pushing any and all changes made on any device to all the others. (iWork apps now push changes across all devices too not just ios devices)

3)Notification center: again much like on the iPhone and iPad notification center is a much needed improvement. It even shows you your notification when you are in a full screen app. Two finger swipe from the right to the left shows a panel with all of your recent notifications.

4)Siri (kind of): because all of these apps work across devices when you use Siri to set a reminder, make a note or schedule an appointment it gets synced across the rest. so yeah in a way its like the features of all the devices are synced across the others.

These are all great features. and there are many more, but is it enough when we consider what Microsoft is doing with windows?