CodeGear offers drag-and-drop web development

CodeGear has launched the Delphi for PHP 2.0 integrated development environment to improve its developer tools suite for building interactive web applications.

Formed as an independent brand from the developer tools division of Borland, CodeGear said that Delphi for PHP 2.0 features visual drag-and-drop design capabilities for rapid development. It also has a PHP component framework for the foundation-level building blocks and design structure.

According to CodeGear, the new product's PHP debugging options sit alongside error insight and source-code formatting features to reduce the potential for bug creation in web development. The company says that built-in HTML templates will help PHP developers to work visually with their Web 2.0 development and collaborate with other HTML designers.

"With the initial introduction of Delphi for PHP, we brought together PHP and rapid application development for the first time," said Michael Swindell, vice president of products at CodeGear. "With version 2.0, we are raising the bar with a wide array of new productivity, debugging and performance-tuning features and much broader 'out-of-the-box' support for databases and popular PHP packages and libraries."

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Who's watching you on the Web?

Do you ever watch old spy movies where sleuths in suits sneak around taking pictures with their shoes and wonder what became of the spy of today? Oh, he's still there in North Korea somewhere pretending to work in shipping, but he's only one lens in the scope of modern espionage. What is more common is the guy just down the street, an agent of the office park cul-de-sac. He's watching you now, tracking, logging and analyzing your every move. You've seen him and you know full well what he does. He just looks different in coffee-stained khakis sitting behind a computer monitor.

I'm talking about Internet Service Providers, which control our connection to the World Wide Web and thus all the personal data that's stored on it. Your websites? Cached. Your search engine history? Saved as history. Your downloads? Tagged and bagged. It's all there, from the very first Internet link to what you just now clicked, saved as encoded cookies sitting there as treats for whomever can reach the jar. The question is: Who's allowed in?

It might be speculation, but with enough financial incentive, it's very likely that ISPs will get in on the act and start selling our Internet records to advertising companies producing specialized content. It's probably already happening. I bet some firm, pushing Pepsi or porn or petroleum, is designing ads based off my entire web history.

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How to Build a Web Store

Many people think that it is easy to build a web store and launch their business online.

Many people think that it is easy to build a web store and launch their business online. After all, all there is to it is just getting a good idea, buying a domain name and getting a web designing and hosting firm to do the rest. However, it is much easier said than done and it takes a lot of hard work, time and effort in order to build a web store that proves to be a success. Given below are a few tips that should help you in creating a web store that has a chance at making profit

1. Create an extensively thought of and detailed business plan.
2. Once you have decided the product that you want to sell, make sure that you also have more than one supplier who gives you good prices and good delivery times.
3. Next, choose a good domain name for your site. Try to keep it relevant to what you are selling and as simple and easy to spell as possible.

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What if the World Wide Web was no more?

Imagine that you no longer wanted to surf the World Wide Web because there was something better.

That's the idea from the same people who designed the Web in 1990.

For regular Internet users, it may seem far-fetched. But scientists in Switzerland are about to cut the ribbons on a brand new world wide computing system they claim will be 10,000 times faster than broadband. It'll be called "the Grid."

For the past seven years, physicists at the CERN particle physics laboratory have been developing the new system as an adjunct of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Ultimately, scientists hope that research at the LHC will help them understand the "big bang," the event that led to creation of the universe. In developing the LHC, they found that they would need to process vast amounts of data, more than any existing computer system on earth could handle. Using dedicated fiber optics and new routers that could handle the load, they developed the Grid to handle the trillions of bits of data that will soon be coming in.

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Oracle Acquires Web Application Testing Tools

Oracle plans to integrate the Empirix Web application testing suite with its existing Enterprise Manager and Real Application Testing packages.

One day after it reported a 21 percent increase in its fiscal third quarter 2008 software revenues to $4.2 billion, Oracle announced yet another acquisition, albeit a small one.

The company announced March 27 that it has entered into an agreement to acquire the e-TEST product suite from Empirix, a company that provides voice and Web application testing and monitoring software.

Oracle plans to integrate the software with its Enterprise Manager and Real Application Testing portfolios. The combination, company officials said, is "expected to result in a comprehensive solution for testing packaged and custom built applications."

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9 Keys to an Effective Logo

Many small companies do not invest in a professional-looking logo. But, the right logo, with the right characteristics, will boost your visibility, credibility and memorability - which means more business for you!

These characteristics include:

Memorability, so that your logo sticks at the forefront of your potential clients' minds. That way, they'll think of you next time they have a need.

• Uniqueness, which helps you stand out from the crowd. For example, if everyone in your industry uses a particular symbol (i.e., travel agencies often use globes in their logos), try to use something else - that way, your logo doesn't just look like everyone else's.
• Meaningful logos spread the message about the distinguishing characteristics of your business.
• Consistency in use of your logo, tagline, materials. Repetition helps people to remember who you are and what you do.
• Scalability, so that your logo looks equally good on a business card and on a sign for your business (or a billboard!), and at every size in between. A second part of this is legibility of your business's name at different logo sizes, and making sure that your designer chooses a font that is readable.
• Professional, in the quality of the graphics, the printing and the paper your materials are printed on.
• Timelessness in your logo will ensure that you don't have to redesign your logo in just a few years, and that your investment and equity in your design will be lasting.
• Differentiation between the colors in your logo - and not just in terms of hue, but in terms of value as well, so that it translates well to black and white or greyscale, and so that color blind people can read it.
  

Having a professionally designed logo can really give your business a jump start, and help your business to get the attention - and clients - you need to succeed.

About the Author

Erin Ferree is a logo, print and web designer who has been helping small businesses grow by boosting their visibility, credibility and memorability for 7 years. http://www.elf-design.com

Tuning Your XML for Clean Web Services

Crap in, crap out -- it’s an axiom that applies to many aspects of enterprise development, but none more so than building reliable and robust web applications and integration projects with Extensible Markup Language (XML). Since its inception, XML has been seen as the cure-all for every problem related to web applications and integration projects. However, “crappy,” poorly written XML can either slow down an integration project, or worse, cause the integration project to collapse.

If it is written and used properly, XML does offer many advantages that can support reliable and robust web applications. The key to successfully using XML in an integration project is to first understand the inefficiencies that may cause poorly written XML, and then apply a rule-based system that establishes policies that can be adhered to.

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