Thursday, December 27, 2007

Dependency Injection with Guice

I'd heard about Guice being a Dependency Injection framework, and was curious to see how it differed from Spring.

One big difference seems to be that Guice, being Java code (plus annotations) is strongly typed. It can check dependencies at compile-time.

Bob Lee also mentions that ease of testing is a big motivator for Guice. I wonder how that limits Guice vs. Spring, for example.

The talk also mentions similarities to Seam. It looks like features from Seam and Guice are going to be blended into Web Beans.

Looks like playing with it is the next thing to do...

Sunday, December 16, 2007

P.J. O'Rourke on Starbucked by Taylor Clark

I don't read book reviews a whole lot before buying them. I check to see if the book made it on a decent list, like a NYT or WSJ review, and whether I care about the subject.

But, I happened to read this review today. I don't think I care about the book, but I've discovered P.J. O'Rourke. One choice gem:

Clark talks a lot about the determination, drive and persistence of the Starbucks Corporation. But if those were the sole qualities of success, toddlers would rule the world. Clark makes much of Starbucks’s discovery that it could put one store close to another and both could thrive. But you can line a street with fire hydrants and dogs will use them all; that’s not necessarily a recipe for wealth, especially if you try to charge the dogs.


Looks like I'll have to read more of his stuff..

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Wireless networking..but what about power?

For the past few years, wireless networking came with the promise of being untethered by wires. You could sit in a cafe and work on your LAN. Wireless sensor motes could be scattered in a forest or on the ocean, and would faithfully transmit data. Intel even ran some ads a few years back, where a user would be working on a Centrino-equipped laptop in the middle of a nice, green lawn.

And I would always think, what happens when these gadgets run out of power? What we really need is to be able to transmit power wirelessly.

Voila!