Naming guidelines provide guidance on selecting appropriate identifiers for the elements that make up class libraries including assemblies, namespaces, types, members, and parameters. Choosing identifiers that conform to these guidelines improves the usability of your library and encourages users to trust that your library will not require learning a new set of conventions.

Vimium is a Google Chrome extension which provides keyboard shortcuts for navigation and control in the spirit of the Vim editor. Watch this video to get a feel for how it works:

Windows/Mac/Linux: Wildly popular open-source media player VLC has updated to version 2.0 and brought a mountain of new and upgraded features with it–including enhanced codec support, hardware decoding, and experimental Blu-ray support.

The new release is a substantial overhaul of the VLC platform that includes a rewritten video output core, half a dozen new video filter algorithms to clean up video and provide a smoother viewing experience, audio resamplers, faster audio processing, multi-thread processor support for popular video formats like H.264, enhanced hardware support for CrystalHD cards and other hardware decoders, and even experimental support of Blu-ray playback.

This is a really cool digital graphics art sostware...
Context Free is a program that generates images from written instructions called a grammar. The program follows the instructions in a few seconds to create images that can contain millions of shapes.

If you are part of a team effort and the team effort succeeds, the right note to hit is not “I owe it all to my team” unless your position is such that everyone will understand you are lying to be modest. Try for “It was a privilege to assist my team by leading their efforts with regards to $YOUR_SPECIALTY.” Say it in a mirror a thousand times until you can say it with a straight face.

mIRC is a popular Internet Relay Chat client used by millions of people, and thousands of organizations, to communicate, share, play and work with each other on IRC networks around the world. Serving the Internet community for over a decade, mIRC has evolved into a powerful, reliable and fun piece of technology. You can learn about mIRC here.

This series of articles is about functional specifications, not technical specifications. People get these mixed up. I don't know if there's any standard terminology, but here's what I mean when I use these terms.

A functional specification describes how a product will work entirely from the user's perspective. It doesn't care how the thing is implemented. It talks about features. It specifies screens, menus, dialogs, and so on.
A technical specification describes the internal implementation of the program. It talks about data structures, relational database models, choice of programming languages and tools, algorithms, etc.

The principles of good programming are closely related to principles of good design and engineering. The following programming principles have helped me over the years become a better programmer, and I believe can help any developer become more efficient and to produce code which is easier to maintain and that has fewer defects.

Unison is a file-synchronization tool for Unix and Windows. It allows two replicas of a collection of files and directories to be stored on different hosts (or different disks on the same host), modified separately, and then brought up to date by propagating the changes in each replica to the other.

yEd Graph Editor is a powerful diagram editor that can be used to quickly and effectively generate high-quality drawings of diagrams.
Create your diagrams manually or import your external data for analysis and auto-magically arrange even large data sets by just pressing a button.

A hierarchical task manager with native XML support for custom reporting.

...NetLogo is a multi-agent programmable modeling environment. It is used by tens of thousands of students, teachers and researchers worldwide. It also powers HubNet participatory simulations. It is authored by Uri Wilensky and developed at the CCL. You can download it free of charge.

Looks nice, but a hassle to install on Windows.
...Redmine is a flexible project management web application written using Ruby on Rails framework.

An excellent list of tools from a .Net guru...
Here are most of the contents of my C:\UTILS folder. These are all well loved and used. I wouldn't recommend them if I didn't use them constantly. Things on this list are here because I dig them. No one paid money to be on this list and no money is accepted to be on this list.

This is a very cool editor. Simple, calming...
Dark Room is a full screen, distraction free, writing environment. Unlike standard word processors that focus on features, Dark Room is just about you and your text.

The problem with trying to answer the IT value question is that it is essentially an unanswerable question. As the CIO turned business writer, Bob Lewis, says in his practical and very readable book, A Manifesto for 21st Century Information Technology, “There are no IT projects and there never were. IT doesn’t deliver value, it enables it.”

According to Lewis, all IT projects – yes, even IT infrastructure projects – are really business projects, in that they are about delivering business value. Specifically, three types of business value: increased revenue, decreased cost, or better-managed risk. That’s it!

Lewis goes on to say, “In the same way that a hardware store provides you with tools to remodel your house but doesn’t do the remodeling, all IT can do is provide the tools business managers and end-users need to deliver value.”

Because there are no IT projects, only business projects, the role of the CIO is focused solely on providing the business with reliable estimates of the IT costs required to get the project done. Although the CIO must collaborate with business partners in establishing a project’s value, it is the business’ responsibility to estimate, and then commit to, the business value of any IT-enabled project.

I'm beginning to wonder.
...The thing is this: you and your internal development team of architects are not going to build the next great framework. You’re not going to build a good one. You’re not even going to build an acceptable one.

And the other thing is this: If a framework is not great, it is awful, counterproductive, and destructive.

Between November 2004 and July 2006, I wrote and edited the AI Expert Newsletter for Dr Dobbs. This is the index to the copies I keep on my site. You can also find them at ainewsletter.com/.

WinPcap is the industry-standard tool for link-layer network access in Windows environments: it allows applications to capture and transmit network packets bypassing the protocol stack, and has additional useful features, including kernel-level packet filtering, a network statistics engine and support for remote packet capture.

Mongoose is easy to use web server. It can be embedded into existing application to provide a web interface to it.

Mongoose executable does not depend on any external library or configuration. If it is copied to any directory and executed, it starts to serve that directory on port 8080 (so to access files, go to http://localhost:8080). If some additional config is required - for example, different listening port or IP-based access control, then a mongoose.conf file with respective options (see example) can be created in the same directory where executable lives. This makes Mongoose perfect for all sorts of demos, quick tests, file sharing, and Web programming.

Thanks for sharing (I book marked your comment and not the original article ...). What struck me about the "divide by 1000" is it suggests the consultant is able to fill/bill 50% of the working hours in a year. That struck me as overly optimistic - I've seen more examples of 25-33% as the typical range achieved.

vim config file questions

You have the inspiration. Now you just need the know-how to bring your visions to life. See how easy it can be to create, edit, and add special effects to your movies using Windows Movie Maker.

There's no better way to create a mood or crank up the energy in your home movies than by adding music. If you haven't yet copied your CDs to your computer, read Quickly Rip CDs to Your Computer to learn how. With Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Movie Maker, you can add any music from your CD collection to your home movies.

Few video editors are as capable as PowerDirector. Adobe Premiere Elements 8 offers an easy-to-use interface, and is probably a better buy if you're also doing a lot of photo editing, due to its bundle pricing with the excellent Adobe Photoshop Elements 8. Pinnacle Studio 14 is easier to use than PowerDirector, offering a dead-simple interface that gets you started assembling clips and previewing your movie in seconds. But it's also not nearly as capable, and it doesn't include any of PowerDirector's high-end hardware optimizations. Novice users and those who value ease over power would be better off with either Premiere Elements 8 or Pinnacle Studio 14. But for power users looking for a comprehensive video editor that can meet their need for speed, CyberLink PowerDirector 8 Ultra is the clear winner.

Editor's Choice...Once you've got that process behind you (program start-up), however, you're all set to use the best consumer video editor out there. The main interface window is well laid out, though not very different from the prior version.

Those looking to move up to more serious video tricks should get our midrange Editor's Choice, Adobe Premiere Elements 8. But for entry-level video editing, Windows Live Movie Maker is my Editors' Choice.

This is a comparison of non-linear video editing software applications. See also a more complete list of video editing software.

Summary of highly-rated book by Steve Blank, Four Steps to Epiphany.

Brief Description - Connect with up to 15 people in different locations and get your point across by showing them what's on your screen. Share, review, and update documents with multiple people in real time. A Windows Live ID (Passport, Hotmail, or MSN) is required to start sessions, but not to join sessions. New in version 1.0: we have added a web based join experience to make SharedView even easier.

Trying this out as a troubleshooting tool for cts.

Looks promising...The DemocraKey X (Version 4.0) is now available for immediate download. The DemocraKey now includes a launcher which runs upon key insertion. It brings up a window allowing you to build Truecrypt Volumes, Mount Encrypted Drives, Surf anonymous, Send Encryted Email, Run a Virus Scan, and more.

Nice...Enigmail is a security extension to Mozilla Thunderbird and Seamonkey. It enables you to write and receive email messages signed and/or encrypted with the OpenPGP standard.

Sending and receiving encrypted and digitally signed email is simple using Enigmail.

This is great...Orson Scott Card gets it!

With Password Safe, a free Windows utility designed by Bruce Schneier, users can keep their passwords securely encrypted on their computers. A single Safe Combination--just one thing to remember--unlocks them all.

Password Safe protects passwords with the Twofish encryption algorithm, a fast, free alternative to DES. The program's security has been thoroughly verified by Counterpane Labs under the supervision of Bruce Schneier, author of Applied Cryptography and creator of the Twofish algorithm.

The harsh reality is that in the tech world, companies prefer to hire young, inexperienced, engineers.

And engineering is an “up or out” profession: you either move up the ladder or face unemployment. This is not something that tech executives publicly admit, because they fear being sued for age discrimination, but everyone knows that this is the way things are.

A sure sign of a 1970s childhood is a fond memory of doodling with the Kenner Spirograph toy. In the back of my mind I've been thinking it would be fun to build something like it into a history appliance. You can already find software versions online, but I wanted something that could be used at the periphery, rather than the focus, of attention. On a recent trip to Active Surplus in Toronto I realized I could build a version quite cheaply. So here it is: a little too thrown together even to call a hack, this is really a kludge.

In the 1970s, a CIA veteran named Richards Heuer came to realize that the agency's analysts—the people who try to decode global security puzzles—suffered from a cognitive bias: when their desks overflowed with evidence pointing in many directions, their brains could no longer assess each new piece of information objectively. To compensate, analysts would simply choose a preferred hypothesis, and then assess each new piece of evidence only in the context of that single hypothesis. This created two glaring problems:

Need old games with source code (in BASIC) from Creative computing magazine.

An, written in chicken scheme...stores contents in a Subversion repository

There are 19 guidelines for creating good open source software listed in his essay:

...given kits to do so, and basically told to go at it. Included in this kit was an Atmel ATMega644PA on a school-made programmer and evaluation board.

This looks cool...3D Color LED Graphics Display - This 3-dimensional graphics display system which named as MaJaTron consists of 125 RGB LEDs arranged in a cube of 5×5x5 dimension. Each LED is a multicolor Red, Green and Blue LED and the control circuit of the system can individually control the intensity of each color, thereby, creating a full color, graphics system. Each LED is independently controllable. To control these 125 LEDs, a control circuit consisting of 13 AVR Microcontrollers ATMega32 is used.

Excellent set of open source tools this guys compiled as Windows binaries...Opensource Software and Videotools for Windows

Cherokee is a very fast, flexible and easy to configure Web Server. It supports the widespread technologies nowadays: FastCGI, SCGI, PHP, CGI, uWSGI, SSI, TLS and SSL encrypted connections, Virtual hosts, Authentication, on the fly encoding, Load Balancing, Apache compatible log files, Data Base Balancing, Reverse HTTP Proxy, Traffic Shaper, Video Streaming and much more.

Written by the same genius that wrote the Tiny C Compiler...FFmpeg is a complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert and stream audio and video. It includes libavcodec - the leading audio/video codec library.

Pretty cool display, but a little over the top.

Possible phone app...Great idea. How about the hardenability curves, hardness conversion charts, etc.?

Well, here's another approach...Your Vision Is Your Software - You're the developer, build what you want. Your app should be an expression of your opinions

Ever wanted to have a robot to do your research for you? If you are a scientist, you have almost certainly had this dream. Now it’s a real option: Eureqa, a program that distills scientific laws from raw data, is freely available to researchers.

The program was unveiled in April, when it used readouts of a double-pendulum to infer Newton’s second law of motion and the law of conservation of momentum. It could be an invaluable tool for revealing other, more complicated laws that have eluded humans. And scientists have been clamoring to get their hands on it.

Eureqa (pronounced "eureka") is a software tool for detecting equations and hidden mathematical relationships in your data. Its primary goal is to identify the simplest mathematical formulas which could describe the underlying mechanisms that produced the data. Eureqa is free to download and use. Below you will find the program download, video tutorial, user forum, and other and reference materials.

Nmap ("Network Mapper") is a free and open source (license) utility for network exploration or security auditing. Many systems and network administrators also find it useful for tasks such as network inventory, managing service upgrade schedules, and monitoring host or service uptime.

NEW RECORD by computer, with 145 moves by Haruhiko Akiyama Feb 4th 2010, one more move than the previous record done by computer.... Even if it is an excellent result, the old record of 170 moves done without computer by C.-H. Bruneau in 1976 remains far from beaten

UNetbootin allows you to create bootable Live USB drives for a variety of Linux distributions from Windows or Linux, without requiring you to burn a CD. You can either let it download one of the many distributions supported out-of-the-box for you, or supply your own Linux .iso file if you've already downloaded one or your preferred distribution isn't on the list.

Upgrading ScrewTurn Wiki from version 2.0 to version 3.0 is easy.

The Application Directory lists free open source software and freeware portable apps. As always, the PortableApps.com Platform, menu, backup utility, launchers, installer, format and other utilities are open source.

Here is a list of most frequently used coding standards for the mainstream industrial programming languages.

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player and multimedia framework capable of reading most audio and video formats (MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, DivX, MPEG-1, mp3, ogg, aac ...) as well as DVDs, Audio CDs VCDs, and various streaming protocols. See the full features list.
It can also be used as a media converter or a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on networks.

Final Cut Pro took home the title of Best Video Editor in last week's Hive Five, beating out Adobe Premiere by a small margin. Following in relatively distant third place was Sony Vegas Pro. It'd be tough to go wrong with any of the top vote grabbers however, all of them have strong and established pedigrees in the world of video editing and movie production.

Windows/Linux: Burning any old video file to a playable DVD is a bit of a hassle. We've always liked using DVD Flick for tackling the task, but DVDStyler is another great option with a bit more focus on nice menus.

Windows Movie Maker has been in every version of Windows since Me... XP and Vista... but it's not in Windows 7. What does that mean to the community of Movie Maker users? They can download and install Window Live Movie Maker and MM2.6, add Photo Story 3, and continue making movies.

Register & use it anywhere, anytime
No download. Compatible with Windows, Mac OS X, Linux.
Capture videos of onscreen action in one click
Record screencasts, tutorials, demos, training, lectures and more.

Looks promising...VirtualDub is a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows platforms (98/ME/NT4/2000/XP/Vista/7), licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It lacks the editing power of a general-purpose editor such as Adobe Premiere, but is streamlined for fast linear operations over video. It has batch-processing capabilities for processing large numbers of files and can be extended with third-party video filters. VirtualDub is mainly geared toward processing AVI files, although it can read (not write) MPEG-1 and also handle sets of BMP images.

...The Pencil Project's unique mission is to build a free and opensource tool for making diagrams and GUI prototyping that everyone can use.

...numerical modeling and astrophysics. What this really means is I’ve been writing code to solve n-body problems. What’s the n-body problem?

iMovie is a simple, easy to use video editing program that comes free with the Apple operating system (it has no Windows PC version).
Despite its simplicity, iMovie offers many of the same features - dropping clips on a time line, cropping them, adding transitions between clips, etc. - as more advanced video editing programs like FinalCut Pro or Premiere.

We reviewed Honestech’s VHS to DVD 3.0 product in depth last year and found a top-class product that quickly pays for itself if you have any amount of analog media to save. Well now, Honestech (Honest Technology) has an updated version, VHS to DVD 4.0 Deluxe.
The gist of the product is still the same: it has an A-to-D (analog to digital) converter box that attached to the your computer via USB 2.0. It accepts inputs via 3 RCA cables (1 video, 2 audio) and/or S-Video. This also means that this device is not just about VHS, but can handle pretty much any audio and/or video input that you can push out via one of those cable types. So get those VHS tapes out of mothballs and transfer them today!

...Designed in part by inventor Ray Kurzweil, the Blio is a free piece of software that you can download for your Windows machine, and that opens up and displays eBooks in full-color with options such as 3D page turning, text only mode for smaller displays, read aloud (text-to-speech), and note annotation. The Blio reader also supports audio, video and interactive media when embedded eBooks.

...One of our great readers sent in this set of 7 pieces of free software that you can, and in most cases should, use to protect your PC laptop. Most of these also apply to your desktop as well.

...There’s no Architecture in Business Service Orientation ! There, I’ve said it, there are no two types of SOA. I am not trying to say that business-level service orientation doesn’t exist or isn’t valuable. However I am trying to say that labeling that SOA harms both Service Orientation at the business level and SOA (a.k.a. “technical SOA”)
For the record here are my definitions for both Business Service Orientation and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

Microsoft Security Essentials provides real-time protection for your home PC that guards against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.

As a solution to this problem, I propose a simple set of rules and requirements that dictate how version numbers are assigned and incremented. For this system to work, you first need to declare a public API. This may consist of documentation or be enforced by the code itself. Regardless, it is important that this API be clear and precise. Once you identify your public API, you communicate changes to it with specific increments to your version number. Consider a version format of X.Y.Z (Major.Minor.Patch). Bug fixes not affecting the API increment the patch version, backwards compatible API additions/changes increment the minor version, and backwards incompatible API changes increment the major version.

Sputnik is a content management system designed for extensibility. It works as a wiki out of the box, but can be extended into other things.

We've put together a list of what we think are the most essential PC apps for every Maximum PC reader. These are all free programs (except one) that should be immediately installed after a fresh build or reformat; 32 indispensable programs and utilities that we couldn't imagine computing without. From the best IM client to FTP browser and Notepad replacement, these essentials truly enhance the Windows experience (much more so than Microsoft's own Windows LIVE Essentials). We're not saying you'd use all 32 entries in our list on a daily basis, but if you are at all serious about utilizing your PC, we promise our picks will not go unused.

Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows 7/Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux

By basing the compensation on continuous rating by your peers, it becomes possible to start out by just participating a bit in your free time, and then gradually, as your ratings increase, spend more and more time on the project.