Last week (Dec 8-12 2008), there was Devoxx (formely known as JavaPolis) in the Metropolis in Antwerp.
The fair usually welcomes 2000 developers for technical conferences on Java, PHP, JavaFX, Scala, Ruby on Rails...
IBM invests on this event and this year Robin Mulkers proposed to demonstrate IBM's technology leadership with a real use case of one of the hottest technologies: RFID.
The project was exlained in the keynote (see some photos here below)
Furthermore, it's a usefull use case for the Devoxx Organization : All participants receivedan RFID badge. Those badges were tracked so that one could for example see which sessions were the most popular. Or participants could leave their name at the booths by letting the hostess scan their badge to participate to games or request for more information.
At IBM, we call this innovation that matters !
PS : Devoxx is one of the best events that I know. The organization is really great. You have free WiFi, you can take drinks directly from the fridge, speackers are accessible, topics are cool... Everything is in place to have a great Developer experience !
This weekend I took some time to have a look at Ubuntu. I find Windows Vista is very slow and I wanted to know how Linux would run on my machine (Acer Aspire 5315, Intel Celeron 1.7 Ghz).
I downloaded a CDRom from Ubuntu's website. You can boot from that CDRom and run Linux without making any changes to your machine.
Directly, I was convinced by the performance : Linux is much more reactive. When applications are slow, the OS isn't and that makes all the difference.
There are however some things that make me realize it would cost me time if I would completely switch to Ubuntu :
My wireless didn't work. I should locate the windows driver and install it on Ubuntu.
My Graphical palette didn't work. Linux doesn't seem to understand how it works
I could not read my MP3 immediately. I should install a special codec over the Internet but as my wireless didn't work...
How to synch with Windows based phone like my Samsung SGH I600 ?
So I guess I will have to go for dual boot. Unfortunately I'm short on disk space... So I'll need to buy some storage first.
This Sunday (Nov 30, 2008) we were at the Lotto Arena in Antwerp for the last concert of Natalia's Glamorous Tour.
It's the 4th time I see Natalia in concert. The first time was ok. The second time I was disappointed. The third time was ok but I still found she was shouting instead of singing.
This time was ... exceptional :
1. She was singing and not shouting: real emotions could flow instead of a mass of decibels.
2. There was a real dance floor : Natalia and the dancers provided a superior experience.
3. There were nice surprises like singing Prince and the appearance of Stam van Samang.
Fernando Arabal : "L'artiste, c'est celui qui rate"
Dans le sens : l'Artiste est celui qui ose prendre le risque de ne pas réussir, celui qui ne vise pas toujours à réussir, celui qui s'expose le plus en mettant en jeu sa propre image.
Raymond Devos : "Un succès c'est un bide auquel on a échappé"
Certains spécialistes informatiques (peut-être moi-même) devraient y penser de temps en temps : notre language est très particulier et peut-être un peu opaque.
J'ai trouvé ici un bon article qui illustre cela :
It was now the turn of Nokia to invite us to a party this Tuesday Nov 4th 2008 : Xperience 08
The party was in Noxx, which is a nice place to party. We had already been in Noxx for a Tiesto Concert.
There was a concert foreseen of The Glimmers. I fact they were the DJs. I would have prefered they play their own music as their Mix for Xperience 08 was very "conventional". Hopefully there was another salon where we could dance on a music in the Noxx style. I guess it was with Noxx's DJs.
After the FSI reader of Playmobil, I see today - thanks to a Twit of Jean-François Ruiz - that Metro (the free newspaper) also found a good solution to let people read their newspaper online.
Commentaire de Thomas : "Je connais deux sortes de camion de pompiers: le pompe tonne et le camion avec la grande échelle. Ici j'ai dessiné le pompe tonne"
Yesterday I spent some time improving my start page. You can now browse my published articles month by month and one by one. See some details here : http://www.lowas.be/index.php?pagename=BrowseNews