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Do you have hard time to track time spent on various projects and work activities? There is an option to use open source tool Inspectime. Implented as an Java server application can be deployed on server like Tomcat, Glassfish, etc, also SQL server like MySQL is needed.

Inspectime allows real time monitoring and reporting of employee’s work, supports time management technique Pomodoro,  it’s open for integration with other systems, allows exports. Available web hosted service is available, free for up to three users, or it can be self-hosted.

Sometimes is very difficult to express or to share ideas on your mind. There are many software mind mapping tools, which could help with that. Good to start is FreeMind, written in Java, so it can run (almost) everywhere. Maps can be exported in SVG or PDF formats. It is one of the five best mind mapping applications, here is rest of them: MindMeister -web/free, Mindjet MindManager  Win/Mac/$349,  XMind Win/Mac/Linux;Free, iMindMap Win/Mac/Linux;$99-295. Pricing is changing over time. Looks like Free Mind is capable do at least 80 percent of tasks, so if you have java, downloadit and try it.

There are many situations, when java client needs to respond to the server. One can use advantage of the Apache HttpComponents, download binary, and start to use it. Here is simple example

HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet("http://localhost/");
HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httpget);
HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
if (entity != null) {
InputStream instream = entity.getContent();
int l;
byte[] tmp = new byte[2048];
while ((l = instream.read(tmp)) != -1) {
}
}

Tim Berners-Lee invented in 1989 the World Wide Web. For his next project, he’s building a web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, video: Unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together. He speaks about that at TED2009, February 2009 in Long Beach, California. There are many interesting projects, like linkeddata.org/

In 1956 IBM decided to come to Rochester MN. IBM looked at nearly 80 mid-size cities in a dozen Midwest states for the plant site, and Rochester and Madison, Wis., were the two finalists. The day of the announcement, IBM President Thomas J. Watson said he was delighted Rochester was chosen because he had flown during World War II with Col. Leland Fiegel of Rochester, who was a personal friend. (see Post Bulletin, IBM Rochester at 50).  Fiegel with Watson went to Moscow in 1942 on secret mission as a pilots, and become friends. Later, when Watson had to decide between Madison WI and Rochester MN, he went for Rochester to honor his friend (see Why did IBM come to Rochester?).

Rochester IBM Alumni News brings more about IBM presence in Rochester.

Jarfinder provides a huge searchable database of classes and jars from a wide variety of java projects. This makes it easy to resolve ClassNotFoundExceptions or NoClassDefFoundErrors.

FIRST – For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology – is project founded by Dean Kamen, inventor and entrepreneur. It’s mission is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership. Part of the project are robotics programs, including FRC – FIRST Robotics Competition for young people ages 14 – 18. There will be four regional competition in Minnesota in 2012, see http://www.mnfirstregional.org/ . In year 2011 was played game Logomotion, as you can see on video of one of the teams from Rochester MN, see http://www.team2530.org/logomotion  There is a preview with Dean Kamen itself on director’s blog, so Kickof beginning of 2012 will be interesting!

Do you line nice URLs? Let’s say example.com/hello/ instead of example.com/hello.jsp ? The first one is without doubts better, does not reveal underneaths technology, and you are free to change it to another technology in the future without changing URLs. Well, there is URLRewriteFilter for J2EE compliant application. It is based on mod_rewrite for Apache, and available at http://www.tuckey.org/urlrewrite/ . Latest version is 3.0.2 and jar file urlrewrite-3.2.0.jar should be copied into lib directory, like {glassfish}/lib or {apache-tomcat}/lib .  Into application/WEB-INF subdirectory should be placed file urlrewrite.xml (next to web.xml).

Foldit is a revolutionary new computer game enabling you to contribute to important scientific research. Foldit allows to find protein structure.

For protein structure prediction, the eventual goal is to have human folders work on proteins that do not have a known structure. This would require first attracting the attention of scientists and biotech companies and convincing them that the process is effective. Another goal is to take folding strategies that  human players have come up with while playing the game, and automate these strategies to make protein-prediction software more effective. These two goals are more or less independent and either or both may happen.

The more interesting goal for Foldit, perhaps, is not in protein prediction but protein design. Designing new proteins may be more directly practical than protein prediction, as the problem you must solve as a protein designer is basically an engineering problem (protein engineering), whether you are trying to disable a virus or scrub carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It’s also a relatively new field compared to protein prediction. There aren’t a lot of automated approaches to protein design, so Foldit’s human folders will have less competition from the machines.

SyncDir is one way synchronization tool for directories or files. It is java based, simple command-line utility. Synchronize a specified target directory or file to match a specified source directory or file. Only the target is modified. Flexible file-matching: combinations of name, size, time, CRC. Computing CRC can be time consuming, so if one is sure, that other characteristic are defining files well enough, could be ommited. Here is an example of command line for regular backup Documents directory to the USB disk at D:

java -jar "C:\\Java\\Sync\\sync.jar" --nocrc --exclude:"Thumbs.db,~*" C:\\Users\\JoeDoe\\Documents D:\\Arc-Docs